Earlier this year, a group of UCalgary engineering students were hard at work designing, building and testing pieces for a project they had coming up.
Though the building took place in Calgary, the ultimate resting place for the project was some-6000 km south.
Project90, a club run by students from the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, built, designed and installed an aqueduct that provides clean water to a small village in Costa Rica.
From May 3-10, the team dug holes, worked construction and casted concrete, among other manual tasks.
“A charity from Canada called Developing World Connections, was in contact with a nonprofit down in Costa Rica who was heavily involved with a town called Taus, and this town needed a water system to be built because their previous one was depreciating,” said Caden Kjelgren.
“It had been in service for 35 years, a lot of it was falling apart.”
The 11 student team was put together in September 2024 and completed most of the planned construction in the week they spent in Central America, said Kjelgren. The outstanding tasks were finalized by Taus residents.
In the time since the installation, the club has had on-going conversation with the village. Kjelgren said that the village can always contact the club, but doesn’t anticipate them needing to return to Taus.
Technical and humanitarian issues
Project90 offers a relatively unique opportunity to engineering students. Rather than having students build heavily technical projects, the club focuses on both technical and humanitarian issues. Kjelgren said that there is no time like university to be charitable.
“There’s a lot of projects at the University of Calgary that are very technical and engineering related, like you build a f1 car, or you build an electric motorcycle. Those are really good for experience, but they miss the humanitarian aspect, where you’re giving back to the community and where you’re helping the people,” he said.
Funding for the trip was among the most difficult pieces of the Project90 puzzle. Kjelgren said that the majority of funding was covered by the University of Calgary and other external donors, but the remaining balance was passed along to the club members.
Since May, the aqueduct has doubled the village’s water flow rate, eliminated the problem of taps running dry and helped the area support tourists.
“So far, it’s been so good, the system’s been in effect for two to three months now, and everyone’s been loving it, enjoying all the benefits, no issues yet,” Kjelgren said.
Moving into the 2025-26 school year, Project90 is in search of their next project, but don’t anticipate another international initiative, due to the higher costs.
“A lot of people are starting to take notice of us over some of the other, maybe traditional technical teams at the University of Calgary, and that goes a really long way,” Kjelgren said.
“I’m looking forward to what’s next.”
