Engineering and Social Impact

There’s no question that engineers have been responsible for some of the major developments in human history: a quick glance at the National Academy of Engineering’s list of the twentieth century’s “20 Greatest Engineering Achievements” leaves very little room for debate on this question. From the electronic device you’re using to access this website to the refrigerator that cooled the beverage you might be sipping while you read, engineers, broadly speaking have been behind the technologies and innovations that define contemporary life.

We might take this contention about engineers as self-evident, but that doesn’t mean the discussion about engineering achievements should end with satisfied praise or blind faith in scientific and technological progress. At a time when our world is teetering on the brink of ecological catastrophe due to climate change and our global economic system is marked by inequality, poverty, and exploitation, it is more important than ever to consider how engineering has to do more than just invent new things to improve the short-term quality of life of those who can afford them. Instead, it is time to begin to articulate how engineering and social impact should go hand-in-hand, so closely linked that it is impossible to think of one without automatically bringing to bear the other.

When we make things on a daily basis, we generally think we’re responsible for what we put into them. When we bake a cake for a party, we are responsible for making sure the ingredients are fresh so that they won’t make anyone sick. Some of us choose to take this attentiveness even further, feeling like we’re responsible for making sure the ingredients are from sustainable producers and businesses that pledge to avoid exploitative labor practices (we wouldn’t want to buy flour from a company that uses children to harvest the wheat, for example). We might choose to use vegan products to reduce our carbon footprint or our reliance on animal husbandry. At the very least, we’ll think critically about what ingredients and cooking techniques we’re using to bake.

Shouldn’t engineers be held to the same standard? It’s admittedly a more difficult question. The engineers behind the latest smartphone technologies could not have known about the abusive labor practices that led to the infamous Foxconn Suicides at the factories where iPhones are produced. Perhaps they couldn’t have conceived of the ways rare metal mining for these devices would wreak havoc on the environment. They certainly don’t own the iPhone patents, so maybe the whole issue is out of their hands. Likewise, perhaps it’s not even right to attribute all the social and economic benefits that communications technologies provide to the world to the engineers themselves.

Questions like these lie at the heart of figuring out how engineering can be “engineered” into a true social impact activity: promoting social justice and the global good while simultaneously fostering innovation and creativity. One possible solution might be through organization: associations like the National Academy of Engineering mentioned above could be formed by scientists and others who demand that their corporate, academic, or other institutional sponsors take greater responsibility over their employment practices, their factories’ working conditions, and the community and environmental impact of their economic activity and labor needs. This idea is sort of like unionization (in fact, it should go hand-in-hand with this kind of organizing), but with a social impact ethos. Another possible solution might be through patent reform, giving the engineers themselves more control over how new inventions are bought, sold, and shared throughout the world. Empowering workers (in this case, engineers) with control over what they produce is a central tenet of economic justice, and it might be a catalyst for greater social movements in every sector where technological development is paramount.

Engineering isn’t quite like baking a cake, but the principles are the same. Just as we try to live better, more just lives on an individual level, so too should we cultivate such values on a social and scientific one. That’s the heart and ethos of social impact, and engineering, as one of our world’s key endeavors, has a major role to play in bringing such ideals into our reality.

My Volunteer Experience in Ghana

When I finally landed in Ghana after a long journey, I felt the thrill of entering the unknown and anticipated the inevitability of the unexpected. Having prepared for this trip for months (and spent an even longer amount of time convincing my parents that this was an important endeavor), I knew that my ability to contribute as a volunteer teacher at an elementary school would depend largely on my ability to adapt to the unknown quickly, efficiently, even seamlessly.

Based on everything we hear and see about Africa in popular media and journalism, we develop a vague impression of the massive, complicated continent. For many of us, part of this hazy understanding is imbued with a sense of apprehension about personal safety, especially for young women. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would be safely housed in a lodging operated by an American organization that assists students volunteering in the country.

Over the next month, I was planning on working as a teacher in a school in Krobo. I would instruct elementary-aged children in English and in other basic skills. I trained for this task by learning pedagogical methods at my school, and I spent a semester teaching Greek-Australian children the Greek language over Skype.

On the first day of my volunteer experience at the school in Krobo, I myself learned lesson number one: “Poverty does not bring unhappiness.” This realization made me aware that I had subconsciously assumed that people living in disadvantaged areas of Ghana would automatically be in a state of perpetual and acute sufferance. Instead, I found a society in which everybody smiles and is very friendly to others. Everyone practices the belief that kindness and amiability are important because we all have limited amounts of time on Earth with one another. 

Has such a thought ever crossed your mind? The possibility of death in western societies is a dreaded nightmare because of its relative lack of frequently amongst young and healthy people. Not in Ghana. Newborn babies there are not given a name until ten days after birth because of the high risk of early infant mortality. What’s more, if they do die, the traditional wisdom articulates that God sent the child’s soul to the wrong house and is taking it back. I see in this philosophy a comforting viewpoint so out of keeping with our Western imagination.

Another striking aspect of daily life in Ghana is that everybody treats one another like a big family. This could perhaps be due to the need to share hardships communally. However, not even the threat of suffering or economic difficulty takes away from the sense of warmth and community amongst the people I met in Krobo. The one explanation I could formulate to explain my observations is that this is the only life they know, so there are no material comparisons to make that would lead to a sense of longing and regret.

Visitors to Krobo are welcomed effusively, as hospitality comes naturally to the local people, especially the children. It is shocking how eager they are to play, communicate, and joke with western volunteers. I doubt that visitors in a western school would receive such a warm welcome; in fact, I know from experience that foreigners are often utterly overlooked and even avoided. Throughout my tenure in Ghana, conversely, I felt totally immersed in the community. Naturally, cultural differences require some adjustment, but the instant connection I felt with the schoolchildren made all differences easy to overcome or set aside. Further, since the students at the local school where I taught were devoted learners, this aspect made the experience more profound than I could have imagined.

Although food insecurity is not an issue in Krobo, accessibility to water is a major problem. I learned this the hard way, as a bucket became my flush accessory as well as my shower companion. Yet, the desperate need to take a shower after spending the day in a humid, hot climate makes you overlook the yellow color of the water

This minor issue, however, was insignificant compared to the miles that local people walked with buckets on their head so that they could retrieve and deliver drinking water to their families. Likewise, the lack of school supplies was striking. Equipped with blackboards and very few books, everything is left to the teacher to convey. The school contained no art supplies or drawing books necessary to stirring the imaginations and creative faculties of the children, and the only major source of physical recreation was the universal football.

This lack of resources is one of the primary reasons for our launching of our Social Impact Club. One of the most significant ways that high-school students can make a meaningful difference in the world is by sharing their educational advantages with others. Since we all have our daily responsibilities in a scholastic environment, as well as our other logistical and financial constraints, not to mention all the myriad aspects of our family and social lives, we are not necessarily in a position to get on the ground with people in need at all times. However, we can always work toward making a greater social impact by sharing our resources with others whether through direct financial contributions or by partnering with existing organizations that help burgeoning philanthropists put their goodwill to the most effective use. In this way, principles of business efficiency and organization are geared toward making the most widely applicable and economically sensible interventions as possible.

Our Social Impact Club aims to provide this latter kind of service for students throughout Athens. We want to give young leaders an opportunity to pursue experiences like the one I had in Krobo by introducing them to new organizations and training them in the skills they’ll need to succeed as volunteers. And, most of all, we want to give students an opportunity to make a difference during the academic year through donations of funds, supplies, or other resources. Sometimes this endeavor will involve traditional forms of fundraising and outreach, and other times it will require more innovative strategies drawn from the entrepreneurial or business worlds. No matter what, we look forward to starting this new journey together.