DURANGO, Colo. – A community in Zambia gains access to clean water. A family in the Navajo Nation flips on a light switch and refrigerates food at home for the first time.

For 20 years, Fort Lewis College’s Village Aid Project has brought students and communities together to solve challenges like access to water and electricity. The partnerships have improved thousands of lives across more than 3,000 households while giving students hands-on experience that shapes them into engineers and leaders committed to serving their communities.

Over the life of the program, nearly 700 students have worked on 61 projects in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Ecuador, Nepal and Zambia, as well as the Navajo Nation, directly benefiting more than 16,000 people.

For Nate Klema, an assistant professor of Physics & Engineering who led this year’s international trip to Zambia, the milestone is a reminder of both the program’s reach and its lasting impact.

“The conversations and interactions you have with the villagers when you’re in that role, because they’re coming and saying things like, well, ‘I never imagined that we could live without cholera here in Zambia’ or ‘I never imagined my daughter could go to school, and now she can, because she doesn’t have to haul water,’” he said.

“Seeing just the scale of transformation in each of these individuals, and then thinking about the statistics of what’s happened over the last 20 years ... I think that’s humbling.”

From the ground up

The program started as a chapter of Engineers Without Borders, co-founded by Don May in 2004, now a retired engineering professor at Fort Lewis College. After eight years, the project became the Village Aid Project.

Laurie Williams, professor of engineering, joined the program as co-director in 2006. In 2017, she became increasingly aware of the serious barriers families in the Navajo Nation face in accessing electricity in 2017.

She saw an opportunity to connect education with service and address real needs in communities where our students call home. An estimated 27% to 30% of families in some parts of the Navajo Nation lack access to electricity, she said.

The VAP projects help communities identify challenges and work toward solutions that residents can maintain and troubleshoot themselves, Williams said. The goal is   long-term sustainability built through genuine community partnership.

That approach has become one of the hallmarks of the program.

“We have a five-year commitment where we work with them in hopes that it becomes something they can sustain,” she said.

Nate Klema pointed to communities in Nicaragua where Village Aid Project previously worked before political unrest halted travel there.

“The community came together and said, ‘You know what? We know how to do this now,’” he said. “They’ve built two of those systems and are working on the third. I think that speaks to the power of the sustainability effort and the way this project’s been set up.”

But the benefits for students extend far beyond the time spent overseas or in the Navajo Nation.

“They come back and they’re better students because they feel a higher, bigger responsibility for what privileges they have,” said Williams, who plans to retire at the end of the school year.

“When they are in the communities, the community looks at them as experts. There’s a whole shift that happens for them. I think it’s because there’s real consequences is just so much more meaningful for them that they have experience for a college class.”

Celebrating success

At a recent celebration of its 20th anniversary, faculty, alumni and students shared the impact VAP has had on their lives and on partner communities

Alum Paul Kokes (Engineering, ‘21) said he first learned about VAP as a prospective student. During a campus visit, a professor invited him to attend a presentation about the program.

He was hooked.

As a student, he participated in VAP projects in Myanmar and Nicaragua before returning as an alum to help install solar photovoltaic systems in the Navajo Nation.

From his trip to Myanmar, he recalled bringing small towels that expanded when placed in water and handing them to children to watch them grow.

“It was cool thing but for them,” he said, adding that it wasn’t until he saw the towels expanding and the joy on the children's faces that he realized the project’s impact on the community. “We’re changing the next hundred years of this town's life.”

Students’ perspectives

Engineering senior Seb Farrell, an intern with FLC’s Marketing & Communications Department, traveled to Zambia hoping to portray the community and its strengths through photography and video.

“So often when we talk about developing communities, we focus on the things that they lack. So I wanted to focus on what they have. I wanted to show strength. I wanted to show family, knowledge, and community in my photographs,” he told about 150 attendees.

“I did not realize how much strength that I would find. I saw it in the teachers. I saw it in the children, in the people who showed up every day to work with us. I saw strength in the tap team, and the water committee. I saw it in the community who came together to solve their own problems. The gift that we gave to them was the tools and the resources to be the heroes of their own story.”

Fellow engineering senior Summer Tsosie who is Diné and plans to graduate in December 2026 , grew up on the edge of the Navajo Nation near Farmington, New Mexico.

She said while many communities lack basic resources like electricity and water, they have an abundance of culture, keeping their traditions and language alive.

She spoke about the challenges of growing up on the reservation —despite having access to water and electricity— and how those problems can sometimes feel overwhelming.

But helping households turn on the switch for the first time, and training elders to manage their own photovoltaic systems, gave her a greater appreciation for the power of individuals and communities to solve those challenges.

Looking ahead

After reflecting on the program’s past, Matthew Klema, co-director, an associate professor of Physics and Engineering who leads the international water and sanitation projects, said Village Aid Project will return to Zambia this year as part of its long-term commitments to partner communities as they also look at future partners closer to home in Latin America.

“The humanitarian aspect, the fact that we’re able to use our skills and our abilities and interaction and time to help communities locally and abroad is very meaningful,” he said, adding the team will continue working with communities to maintain water systems, evaluate new projects and strengthen locally led solutions.

He highlighted the fact that 93% of the money raised for VAP goes into buying materials for the project while students raise their own funds to get to their destinations.

For students like Summer, the experience can change how they see what is possible.

“The problems I grew up seeing don’t feel quite as untouchable anymore. I certainly do not know how to fix them all, but I know how to build something. I know how to explain it. And I know how to leave somebody with a little more ownership over something that directly affects the quality of life.”

To learn more about Village Aid Project visit their website: https://www.fortlewis.edu/about-flc/initiatives-partnerships/village-aid-project/village-aid-home

 

Written By Nardy Baeza Bickel