Project timeline: January 2023-April 2023
What is WRAMP?
" The Women’s Research and Mentorship Program (WRAMP) empowers and supports women in STEM through a multi-tiered mentor program and hands-on WPI graduate research. Within this program, teams of four are created, including one graduate student, one undergraduate student, and two high school students. Throughout the semester the team will work on the graduate student's research project together. "
-WPI Pre-Collegiate Outreach
Image sourced from WPI
Project: Ethiopian Microflush Toilet
"A Microflush toilet is a low-cost, sustainable, environmentally friendly toilet that uses a small amount of greywater from a user’s handwash to flush fecal matter into a filter digester where solids are composted, using earthworms. The compost can then be used as a fertilizer for agriculture or gardens. CRS Ethiopia will be implementing Microflush toilets and training as a part of its water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH, strategy. Microflush toilets not only provide improved sanitation but also an opportunity for the development of economic livelihoods in rural Ethiopia through the sanitation business opportunity. The need for Microflush toilets in rural Ethiopia is great, and it is anticipated that the implementation of the toilet and related businesses will rapidly reach scale. To achieve this scale-up, CRS Ethiopia, through the Global Sustainable Aid Project (GSAP), will be hosting Microflush toilet-maker trainings. These will teach makers all the steps to safely construct a quality Microflush toilet."
-Catholic Relief Services
Our Goals
We are working towards beginning to develop a database for storing and keep track of toilet development using KoboToolbox
Publishing a blog post for National Women In STEM Day regarding the project
Creating a draft of the vermiculture manual on-site workers will use to build the structures
Focusing on humanitarian goals of providing Health and Sanitation to citizens that do not have current access
Reflection
For more specific details please visit our project website. We were able to present our project during the final WRAMP session of the year and it was very successful! We accomplished a lot during the course of the project and I am very proud of the growth we have shown as a team.
Our opening session photo
My presentation of databases for developing a database to maintain data
