Their mission is to make sure communities have the capacity to meet basic needs. Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a non-profit organisation that consists of professionals and students from a variety of professions, including engineering, health, anthropology and business. But at its core is a model rooted in engineering solutions to help make communities sustainable at low cost.

Its story began with two men who met a decade ago in a Boulder, Colorado backyard. Angel Tzec, a landscaper and representative of the Belize Ministry of Agriculture, and Bernard Amadei, a Professor of Civil Engineering at CU, went from small talk to taking action in Tzec’s village in San Pablo, Belize, which was desperately in need of clean water.