As a Global Brigade volunteer, I travelled to Ghana for the construction of in-home sanitation infrastructure in the rural village of Ekumpoano.
In September 2021, I traveled to Ghana as a Global Brigades Engineering Volunteer. The aim of the trip was to raise funds, build and install 8 pour-flush water closet toilets with septic tanks. The project supported the rural village of Ekumpoano to achieve an Open Defecation Free Status.
It was incredible experience that opened my eyes and taught me to use my engineering skills to make a real impact on people's life. It was a pleasure to work with locals to partition existing bathrooms of houses and I am proud to say that we successfully finished the project in the time allocated.
As any engineering project, we had various design parameters including: 1) household size, 2) design period, 3) sludge accumulation rate, 4) diameter of pit, 5) depth of pit, 6) filtration unit. These were the specifications of the final construction:
Oval chamber parameters: radius of 2.5 feet, diameter of 5 feet, depth of 5 feet.
Filtration unit parameters: length of 5 feet, breadth of 3 feet, depth of 2 feet.
I hope to go back to Ekumpoano in the future and will continue to look to be involved in volunteering engineering brigades like this one.
