Appoximately 50 students, faculty and parents drank tea and talked about building latrines Friday.
Students in the Tufts chapter of Engineers Without Borders discussed their summer trip to Tibet in the Crane Room in Paige Hall over refreshments of butter tea and other Tibetan delicacies.
Seven of the group's students participated in the Gyatsa Project - named for the village in Tibet where participants built student-designed latrines and solar cookers, performed water safety tests, and led education sessions.
The project was the first major initiative of the year-old student group, which has an advisory board of professors. Engineers Without Borders is an international non-profit organization that works to promote sustainable development.
The student group's president, senior Grant Sharpe, presented a multimedia slideshow with photographs of the group's trip. Four other group members joined Sharpe at the presentation.
The group began with about 35 members, half male and half female, civil and environmental engineering graduate student Sara Freeman said. The group's members, 20 percent of whom were not engineers, were "a bunch of really enthusiastic students," she said.
In preparation for the project, students created prototypes of the solar cooker and tested them on the Tisch Library roof last winter. The experimental cooker reached nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit. "I know that they blew over quite a few times in the span of testing," Freeman said, "Boston winters aren't the most friendly."
The students had two weeks of language training and studied traditional medicine and government structure.
Trip preparations were threatened by bureaucratic problems. "We didn't get our visas until the last possible day, which was a Friday," Freeman said. "We left on Sunday."
Students learned about many aspects of Tibetan culture, such as religion and daily life. "We tried to apply those aspects to the models and designs the engineers were working on in order to make them appropriate," said Elliot Hirshon, the culture and logistics coordinator for the project and the group's operations administrator.
"As for the logistic aspect, if you can imagine our face when [we were told] that we were going to do a project in Tibet... I'm still incredibly surprised at what we were able to accomplish," Hirshon said. "Tibet is... one of the most isolated places in the world."
The solar cooker will help alleviate lung problems and eye disease caused by cooking indoors with combustible fuel. The students' design can also be used for sterilizing medical waste and will help slow the depletion of trees and brush in the areas surrounding the village.
The composting latrine was designed to solve health issues by enclosing waste and reducing smell.
The projects were part of the group's efforts to adhere to Engineers Without Border's focus on education, giving communities the tools for self-improvement.
Group members passed the solar cooker into the care of the village doctor and taught him how to use, maintain and even improve it. They also offered educational sessions on topics such as proper hygiene. The group estimates its efforts benefited 3,000 people.
The group encountered many difficulties both in planning and on the trip. "In order to get there, we had to be incredibly flexible," Hirshon said.
Members experienced the wan guo (circling field) harvest festival, which requires participants to drink in celebration of the caterpillar fungus harvest. "Even though we would physically put our hands over our cups, they would pour through our fingers," Hirshon said.
Caterpillar fungus, a critical industry in the area, is a traditional medicine sold for around $400 a box.
The group remained neutral on Tibetan politics - a dual system with both a democratically elected village leader and a Chinese Communist Party representative - in recognition of the sensitivity of the issue.
Members plan to return to Tibet this year and possibly next year to redesign the solar cooker to be portable and more convenient for Tibet's nomadic societies, offer training sessions on building composting latrines, and focus on the problem of medical waste.
The group is also planning projects for other areas, including Peru and Bosnia, as well as working to expand their role in the Tufts community by collaborating with other programs and attracting more liberal arts students.
