The purpose of this project was to serve the indigenous Kichwa (Quechua) people living in the watershed area of Malingua Pamba-Quinta Tunguiche (MP-QT) in the Andes of Ecuador (elevation 9,500’ – 12,000′) by completing the objectives approved in the global grant.

Project Managers Without Borders began their relationship with Engineers Without Borders in December 2015 to provide project management services on their ongoing Ecuador Irrigation project.

Location: Malingua Pamba, Ecuador 2016 to Present

Scope:

The project was broken up into three main objectives:

  • Potable
  • Irrigation
  • Sanitation
  • Organic Farming/Nutrition Training/Visit to Salinas

Benefits:

The Potable Project serves 130 households or approximately 1300 village people. The Irrigation Project serves approximately 80 Households or 800 people.

The Sanitation Project provides composting toilet for the elementary school which serves 105 students and adults. The other composting toilets serve up to 400 community members.

The other projects, Organic farm training (mainly for the women) are expected to serve 40 households or 400 people, and Nutrition training (second course) will impact 400 people. The Field Trip has inspired micro-businesses within the village and show direction of community economic & leadership development.


Project Managers Without Borders volunteers quickly acknowledged the areas of opportunity on the project and began planning and coordinating the logistics of the Engineers Without Borders volunteers. This soon became a partnership between the two organizations where Project Managers Without Borders were also able to analyze and recommend best practices for future projects (templates, project setup tasks, project sustainment activities, etc.).


As a result of Project Managers Without Borders’ involvement, Engineers Without Borders now has repeatable processes for planning project trips, tools and templates to execute projects and examples of impact reports and lessons learned.


“As a non-profit partner of EWB I was very grateful for the assistance provided by PMWB. I was trying to keep everything organized on my own but there were things our project manager helped with that I didn’t even think about. They kept us on track and allowed the engineers to focus on engineering and me to coordinate with the community. ” – Kellie Thompson