Students Save the Rainforest: One Design at a Time
Engineers Without Borders’ (EWB) 5-week Designathon is back! This year Bristol SU Society, Engineers Without Borders, have challenged students to solve the threats facing the rainforest.
In groups of 5-6, students must design innovative engineering solutions to the real threats faced by the Atlantic Rainforest in South America, an area with high biodiversity and vulnerability to human activities.
Students can present their solutions as practical designs, short reports, drawings and theoretical concepts. The most impressive solution will earn the winning team £200!
To fund the challenge, EWB were awarded a sustainability grant from the Bristol Students’ Union.
The Designathon kicked off on Tuesday 18 October with an introductory event, which included a plant potting session in collaboration with Plant Soc and an introduction to their task. The successful event achieved them a fantastic 60 participants.
On Thursday 27 October EWB invited speakers with a background in tropical ecology to provide real-world context for the challenge. Their first speaker, Amrish Pandya, founded the Bristol Rainforest; a project which aims to put rainforest trees into classrooms all over Bristol. Their second, Viola Heinrich is a research associate at the University of Exeter whose PhD aims to understand climate change mitigation within the tropics with a focus on the Brazilian Amazon.
With a better understanding of the importance of their task, groups have now entered the workshopping phase of the challenge, during which teams will be able to use tech, tools and materials to bring their solutions to life.
The challenge will conclude with team presentations on Tuesday 29 November.
Each group's idea will be judged against a set of criteria including feasibility and implementation; effectiveness and cost; innovation and originality; environmental consideration and clarity of presentation.
Not only this but bonus points will be given to groups which have maintained healthy plants from the plant potting session.
Whilst the winning team will get a £200 cash prize, those in second and third will also win sustainable prizes so it’s all to play for.
Follow the progress of the challenge on the Engineers without Borders Instagram: @EWB_Bristol
