With a new school year just around the corner, many of our 20+ EWB academic chapters across Canada have started their recruitment processes. Our University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) chapter has already hit the ground running and is working hard, creating impactful changes within the community.
Upon hearing about the incredible work that the EWB UPEI Chapter had been doing earlier this year, we sat down with the UPEI Chapter President, Lilly O’Reilly, now an incoming third-year undergrad student at UPEI and recent recipient of the C.D. Howe Scholarship Endowment Fund National Engineering Scholarship.
Lilly shared that she was struck with the idea of bringing back the EWB Chapter at UPEI after she went to Honduras to design and improve water systems in rural communities. She had questioned why she was going abroad when there were systemic challenges right in her own community in Charlottetown, PEI. At the perfect moment, an opportunity arose —people were looking for someone to lead the EWB Chapter at UPEI — and inspired by EWB’s mission and its focus on local partnerships, Lilly eagerly took on the role of President of the UPEI Chapter.
Today, Lilly works with her amazing, supportive, and hard-working executive team to find ways for engineering students to interact on the local level such as finding project partners and integrating clinical design challenges into the EWB UPEI Chapter.
“We’re still working on getting into the flow of things, but it’s been amazing to work with people that are so enthusiastic and driven. A big shout out to the executive team and the Team Leads, for taking on independent projects and developing them beyond where I’ve ever imagined it could go!”
— Lilly O’Reilly, President of UPEI EWB Chapter
Many of the projects the UPEI Chapter spearheads emphasize collaborating with locals to identify the problem and work through solutions. For example, one of their most recent projects was in partnership with West River Community Pantry, where the chapter was able to implement how to manage temperatures for food loss, designing technologies that could not only monitor temperature management, but insulation as well. The UPEI Chapter has also been partnering with Blooming House Women’s Shelter, whose co-founders also have engineering backgrounds, to create a drop box that allows them to receive donations without having to disclose the home’s location.
Lilly and the UPEI Chapter also hope to improve the IT system in Blooming House to organize materials to make it easier to get funding from governments, and help with the consultation of opening another shelter that has transitional housing and provides longer-term shelter, in the fall of 2024!
With an emphasis that communities should not go overlooked in solving problems as they have the finger on the pulse, the UPEI Chapter continues to make innovative impacts in their society. If you are a student of UPEI and are interested in participating in the chapter, join the EWB UPEI Chapter! If there are any questions about how to partner on design projects with the EWB UPEI Chapter or any other queries about the chapter, reach out to them on Instagram or Linkedin. Also, students who are interested can add themselves to the Discord channel through the Linktree in the Instagram bio, to join in on the conversation!
EWB Canada applauds the efforts made by the EWB UPEI Chapter and cannot wait to see the future innovations and systemic changes they will bring to their communities by collaborating and mobilizing engineering technologies to address challenges.
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