The engineering students that the Professors in the Mechanical Engineering Department at VU bring on their Service trips to Panama, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Peru, Ghana and Cambodia help build the schools that the village children will attend. They also help build chapels that villagers can go to pray and celebrate mass together.

Villanova nurses help educate the villagers on child care, elder care wound care, and other health issues.

One of the most important projects these VU engineers undertake are their water projects.These students bring water to villages that never had water. All of these projects are joint projects in which students work side by side with the village people because they want to empower the villagers to help change their situation. The students train people on how to maintain the water systems.

  Service trips create an awareness of the poor and the social injustices that cause the poverty—experiencing this poverty first hand is better than just reading about it.

  Sophie Vandervelde, ask to watch the video of the villagers in Ghana (yes Ghana) reactions when the water system built by the VU engineers brings water to them for the first time in their lives! These Service trips really do make a difference!

   St Augustine said,” The rich need the poor as much as the poor need the rich.”