Building a Better World
Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) is partnering with communities around the world to meet their basic human needs. We’re building footbridges to provide pathways to opportunities. We’re installing solar panels to bring light where it is dark. We’re digging for water so hope can spring from the ground. Each project builds the foundation for a community to thrive for years to come. Learn more about our approach to development >>
But it takes more than materials to build a strong foundation.
EWB-USA’s volunteers are the heartbeat of our organization. These champions volunteer their time, their energy and their expertise in pursuit of our vision of a world where every community has the capacity to sustainably meet their basic human needs. Become an EWB-USA volunteer >>
Our Mission
Partner with communities and develop leaders to build a better world.
Our Vision
A world where every leader is equipped to build and every community is built to thrive.
See our path for progressing our vision in our Strategic Plan >>
Our Purpose
Our student and professional volunteers partner with underserved communities at home and internationally to build a more sustainable world. These community-driven partnerships address essential needs with climate conscious infrastructure while cultivating engineering and leadership skills in our partners and volunteers.
Our Values
We Value Community Voices, Vision, and Empowerment
Our community partners have ambition, courage, and commitment. We assist our partners in gaining aptitude, self-actualizing, and growing in their ability to drive change. Community partners are the center of our story.
We Value Purposeful Partnering
We strive for humility and recognize that we do not have all the answers. We seek partnerships that are built on mutual respect and trust, that facilitate positive collaboration, and that make the most of the resources available while maximizing the benefit to the communities we serve.
We Value Ethical and Sustainable Solutions
With human dignity and respect for the environment at the forefront of our work, we seek high-quality engineering solutions that incorporate local knowledge and contribute to communities’ climate resilience. We embrace community leadership at every step of the process to build safe, effective, and long-lasting solutions.
We Value Learning and Growth
We seek to support the dignity, development, and growth of our partner communities and volunteers alike through engineering projects that encourage both technical and social learning. We seek to learn and deepen our understanding of the challenges we aim to address while recognizing that we are part of a much larger global solution.
We Value Health, Safety, and Wellness
We hold paramount the health, safety, and wellbeing of our community partners and volunteers in all we do. We value our organizational culture of safety, responsibility, and accountability that guides our path to high-quality work and achieving our mission.
Our History
In April 2000, Dr. Bernard Amadei, professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, visited a community in San Pablo, Belize, to assess their water supply. He learned that the 950 Mayan Indians living in the heart of the Belize jungle lacked clean water and sanitation infrastructure, and that most of the community’s children did not attend school because their time was dedicated to collecting water from miles away.
While the community had the natural resources and motivation to build a reliable water supply system, they lacked the technical skills to design a lasting solution. Professor Amadei went home and consulted colleagues on potential solutions, then returned to the community with a prototype and fourteen of his students to put the plan into action. The team installed a clean water system supplied and powered by a waterfall a quarter-mile from the community. This simple and low-cost solution was the first EWB-USA project!
Dr. Amadei continued to harness the power of engineers to complete high-impact projects in other developing countries by officially founding Engineers Without Borders USA in 2002. Since then, EWB-USA has grown from a handful of passionate individuals to thousands of passionate volunteers working on hundreds of engineering projects across the globe.
“Improving the lives of the 5 billion people whose main concern is to stay alive by the end of each day on our planet is no longer an option for engineers; it is an obligation.” -Dr. Bernard Amadei, EWB-USA Founder
