“Before studying Humanitarian Engineering, I had a totally different career”, Apostolia says. “After finishing my master’s in Electrical Computer Engineering in Greece, I worked as a software engineer for about six years. However, I always felt that it wasn’t my end station. I wanted to do something else, and contribute to something meaningful.”
Volunteer work
That’s why she started volunteering in her free time. “I worked for an organisation in Athens that provides necessities to people experiencing homelessness. That’s when I realised I love working with people and wanted to devote more of my time volunteering.” Through social media, Apostolia found an organisation building a school in a Maasai village in Kenya, where she went to volunteer for three weeks. “The community was so welcoming, and they really let me into their daily life, which was an amazing experience. So, I’ve always kept in touch with the locals since then.”
Back in Greece, Apostolia stayed in contact with the people she met, providing them with reusable pads so young girls wouldn’t have to drop out of school due to a lack of menstrual products. It was around the same time that she started contemplating pursuing another degree. “I looked around for master’s with a humanitarian context, and found Humanitarian Engineering at UT. The programme appeared to be really broad, including pretty much all engineering disciplines and of course the social, cultural and ethical aspects. It seemed like a great way to broaden my horizons as an engineer and do something meaningful, so I decided to go for it.”
Research in Kenya
Currently, Apostolia is in her second-year elective space. She chose to do a capita selecta course, giving her the chance to work on a topic of her choice for ten weeks. “I immediately thought of the community in Kenya, and having had such a transformative time there, I wanted to give something back. I knew they were struggling with water quality and shortage, with people in the village reporting health problems because of it. So, our programme director, who is also Kenyan, got me in touch with a university team that was interested in studying the systems and health in Kenya, and I was able to join their research.”
During her travel, Apostolia studied the water and sanitation challenges in this community in their broadest sense. “These challenges rarely exist in isolation, but are intertwined with other problems a community is facing,” she explains. That means, as an engineer, you have to identify all the different factors and systems that affect a challenge and its possible solution, including traditions and culture. “It’s not just about engineering, but putting the community first. A solution should work in their context, and to understand that, you really have to put your own perception aside. You can’t just copy-paste a solution that works here and expect it to work the same elsewhere.”
Understanding the context
To understand the lives of the local people, Apostolia spent a lot of time observing and talking with them. How do they use the already available water resources, such as the tank, pond and natural spring? And what role does getting water play in their daily life? “I got invited into people’s houses, had dinner with them and got to see first-hand where they get their water. I was even invited to attend a ceremony with the elders of the community, which was a really special experience,” she says.
The team also did a water analysis to assess the quality of the available water, and talked to doctors at the hospital about the reported illnesses related to it. “We ended up having a big co-creation session where all kinds of members from the community came together to have dinner and discuss the challenges they run into, and how they see their future,” Apostolia explains. “The results of the analysis showed the water was quite contaminated, so it’s worth exploring options for filtration in the future. That requires a lot of additional research about the infrastructure and water quality standards, though. I’m considering this project as an option for my master’s thesis, but a big part of that is finding funding, which I’m currently working on.”
The importance of fieldwork
Her experiences showed Apostolia the importance of fieldwork. “In many cases, as an engineer, you simply haven’t experienced the context the communities you’re serving find themselves in. That’s why it’s so important to visit the places you are researching, and luckily, this is also an integral part of the curriculum,” she says. For example, last year, the group went to France to visit an informal refugee camp as part of their project work. “We volunteered there for four days, and it was an invaluable experience to understand the people we were trying to design a solution for.”
Doing fieldwork also brings a totally different layer to practising research, Apostolia has learned. “There are many intricacies to doing fieldwork. When a community invites you, an outsider, into their lives and shares their experiences, that’s a vulnerable act. How do you approach that in a respectful way?”, she explains. “Ethics is a big part of the curriculum, and for good reason.”
In the end, it’s not about you as an engineer, but about the community you’re serving. “That’s why you have to approach a challenge with a humble mindset and listen carefully. The people you meet know their own living situation best – I have never used a water tank in my life, while they have done so the entirety of their lives. Of course, they know way better than I do,” Apostolia says. “Communities possess a wealth of knowledge, and as a humanitarian engineer, it’s my job to recognise that and work together to develop a suitable solution. That is true collaboration for me.”
