Engineering with soul

Engineers Without Borders find solutions to problems in developing communities

By SHLOMO MAITAL
Technion Prof. Mark Talesnick (right) and a student521 (photo credit: COURTESY PROF. MARK TALESNICK)
Technion Prof. Mark Talesnick (right) and a student521
(photo credit: COURTESY PROF. MARK TALESNICK)
EWB forms bonds with the communities in which it works and makes sure it transfers its projects to locals before moving on. It seeks to educate “engineers with souls,” “global engineers,” faculty and students who work to “develop sustainable appropriate engineering solutions to problems we have assessed in developing communities, solutions these communities can maintain, fix, sustain and reproduce.”
Talesnick explains that “engineering schools worldwide emulate the lessons of schools in North America, where engineers are taught mainly how to build 80-story buildings and six-lane highways.” “We are trying to create a new type of engineer at the Technion – and it’s working,” he continues. “If we don’t change the way we teach engineering, the planet will collapse.”
“My experience is that engineering curricula lack three crucial aspects,” Talesnick tells The Jerusalem Report. “First, social conscience. I find that when social conscience is injected, students understand how their engineering tools can make a positive impact. Second, at the Technion, despite its being a technological institute, most electrical engineering students could not install a light switch, so “hands on” experience is imperative. Third, I know this will sound corny, but I want my students to learn leadership skills.
“Our curriculum produces technocrats; I think that engineers and technologists should be shouldering as much of the leadership in our society as do the lawyers, business people, ex-military personnel, and the new hit, journalists. I have found that by introducing social conscience and by providing the opportunity for hands-on work on real-life projects, the outcome is leadership skills. This is one part of my objective of introducing Engineers Without Borders to the Technion.”
Talesnick grew up in Kingston, Ontario.
“Like every young boy in Kingston,” he says, “I had two dreams, to play ice hockey and drink beer. I wasn’t good enough at either to make a profession out of them.
“I studied Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Toronto, and after graduating in the spring of 1982 I came on a trip to Israel, with no plans on staying. A trial stint at a kibbutz did not work out, which meant I found myself with no money. I got a job as a drill rig geologist on the original Dead-Med project.
Fate and work brought me to the Technion, where Prof. Gidalya Wiseman, an expat Canadian, introduced me to my mentor Prof.
Sam Frydman, who convinced me to start graduate studies, which I begin in early 1983.
“Studying at the Technion was fun.
Language was not a barrier for me. Many of the professors were Anglo Saxons, and in some cases my limited Hebrew was better than theirs. I did a shortened IDF army service, then reserve duty. I just retired from reserve service a few years ago. I grew up in a Labor Zionist household. I attribute both my love for Israel and my social bent to my folks Ruth and Irwin Talesnick. They taught me well.”
The Technion EWB chapter has eight ongoing projects, including water and energy projects in Ethiopia and the Negev and a groundbreaking one in Namsaling, Nepal. Talesnick speaks about the latter, an “anaerobic digester,” or biogas generator, with enormous passion.
“Our partnership with the Nepali village of Namsaling (about 1,000 families) started in 2008. The households have very limited financial resources. Most of the families survive on limited agriculture and most households will keep four or five large animals, yaks, cows, pigs or water buffaloes.
Nepal finds itself literally between a rock (the Himalayas) and a hard place (India).
“Namsaling and many other villages face the same challenges – lack of clean water and sanitation due to animal and human waste running off into the water sources, resulting in health issues and digestive track disorders, and lack of affordable clean energy. A Nepali woman has a 30 times greater chance of contracting respiratory disease than a Western woman because of inhaling indoor cooking fire smoke. Cooking, heating and lighting in so many rural Nepali households are achieved by cutting down trees and burning wood.
“This creates a vicious circle – water has to be boiled to purify it, so more trees are cut down, burning more wood and creating more indoor smoke. The question is, how can these problems be addressed together, within the capacity of the local communities?” The answer: Biogas generators, which use bacteria, water and animal manure or human waste in an oxygen-free environment to generate hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane that can be used for cooking. There are 200,000 such generators in Nepal. But on a preliminary trip to Namsaling, Technion students found that building them in villages was expensive and time-consuming. First, a pit is dug, filled with soil, then a dome is shaped over it, covered with concrete, and finally, the soil under the dome is removed.
Technion EWB students invented a way to build biogas generators faster and cheaper, first using aluminum and Styrofoam (not readily available in Nepal), then using locally available bamboo fashioned into large pieshaped sushi mats. The team has built 60 biogas generators in Namsaling, and they hope to build 950. Each one is a household unit, able to convert 40-50 kilograms (100 lbs) of human and animal waste into 5-6 hours of cooking fuel daily. Each of these units saves 12,000 kg (25,200 lbs) of wood per family a year. That’s close to a dozen large trees.
Nepal is desperately poor, with annual per capita income of about $1,300. Only 40 percent of Nepal’s population has access to electricity and in rural areas access drops to only 5 percent. Ironically, Nepal’s steep mountains and rushing rivers are ideal for hydroelectric dams, potentially able to generate 44,000 megawatts of power; but today only 600 megawatts of hydro power are produced, owing to lack of capital. As a result, just 1 percent of Nepal’s energy needs comes from electricity. Biogas is one solution.
I ask Talesnick about some of the other projects he and EWB are working on.
“We have been building a partnership with a community in Ethiopia,” he says.
“It is a small village in the northern part of the country. An assessment mission is now spending time in the village. The village is incredibly poor and suffers from the regular, yet crippling, difficulties of water, sanitation and energy. We hope to be able to start with a water collection program and education modules in sanitation.”
EWB is also very active among Bedouin in the Negev. “One of our plans,” he relates, “is to install a hybrid wind turbine and photovoltaic system in the Bedouin village of Qasr A Sir in the northern Negev.
“The idea is to help drive co-op initiatives undertaken by the people of the village, especially the women, in the fields of cooking and making clothes. We built from scratch a power generating wind turbine from raw materials, magnets and winding coils for the generator, blades for the propeller, the electrical system and stand – all manufactured by the students. The turbine is now being tested on a Technion building rooftop, before installation in the field.”
Idit Zarchi, a former Technion student who worked on the Nepali project, is now active in building a Tel Aviv EWB branch. Their main project, she tells The Report, is to “work with a village in Tanzania that has a fluoride contamination problem in its groundwater.”
I quote the prophet Isaiah (42:7) to her: “I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations” and ask if she feels the EWB project in Namsaling is fulfilling the Biblical prophecy, with Israel literally bringing light to the (poorer) nations? “I’m not a fan of this question,” she replies.
“EWB is an international organization that works on helping communities in need without any affiliation to a Jewish agenda.
And since when do the people of Israel bring light unto the nations? The Namsaling community knew what they wanted. We just tried to help.”
It’s easy to misunderstand Zarchi’s blunt response. But I understood. The whole focus of EWB is to say, this is not about us (the visitors), it is solely about you, the village, the community. We have no political agenda. We simply want to help you help yourselves because it is the right thing to do and because we ourselves will learn and grow by doing so. 
Shlomo Maital is a senior research fellow at the S. Neaman Institute, Technion