The residents of Miramar live in one of the poorest provinces in all of the Dominican Republic. They are a part of the 780 million people that don't have access to an improved water source. Since their local river is polluted and their water tower is broken, their only real option is to walk with their buckets and barrels to the bottom of a steep dirt hill to buy water and lug the heavy load back up the hill. Still, many families cannot afford to do this and instead collect their water from the broken water tower which carries many diseases and does not meet the needs of the families.

Success with this project will mean the beginning of a relationship between EWB at USF and the town of Miramar as well as the opportunity to return later and address other health issues in the community such as sanitation. This relationship is providing the students of our chapter with valuable real world experience in the development and implementation of an engineering project. The cultural and technical challenges intrinsic in such a project provide a rare opportunity for engineers in training to utilize their academic training in a practical effort and to develop skills which are otherwise developed only after entering industry following graduation.

Since EWB-USF has been in Miramar, we have successfully installed three rainwater catchment systems that are still functioning as intended. It was our goal to travel in the Summer of 2020 and install the last three catchment systems, but do to COVID-19, we were not able to. In our next trip, however, we will focus the trip primarily on educating the community about the risks of polluted and untreated water and having them play a larger role in installing the systems. We will give them an instruction manual on how to build and maintain their catchment systems so that they may continue to expand the project while we are not there.