Their morning began before the sun had risen. Group members left Irvine at 5 a.m. to journey across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. As they arrived at the designated site, wooden beams, posts and boards were unloaded from the back of their white pickup truck.
The UC Irvine students began laying beams along the concrete foundation already in place, eventually creating the framework of a house. With each strike of a hammer, lumber became walls, metal became a roof, and soon the structure was complete.
“Finally, my own space!” one of the teenage onlookers cheered in Spanish as he saw the bright blue home – newly built for his family by the students at Engineers Without Borders.
Founded in 2002, Engineers Without Borders USA is a humanitarian nonprofit committed to improving well-being worldwide through sustainable engineering projects. The UC Irvine chapter emerged in October 2023, revitalizing its pre-COVID-19 pandemic predecessor. The club welcomes all students, regardless of background or engineering experience.
In bringing the organization back to UC Irvine, co-presidents Brian Mora, a fifth-year mechanical engineering major, and Geoffrey Vander Veen, a third-year civil engineering student, say they hope to give Anteaters opportunities to serve the global community through various volunteer projects, applying engineering concepts through hands-on experience.
“In many ways, students are driven by the desire to do good in the world – and, partially, just by a desire to have a good time,” Vander Veen says. “The goal of our club is to introduce people to different perspectives and ways of life that they wouldn’t have otherwise encountered and to broaden their horizons through really cool projects.
“In the past, this has included trips to Armenia in collaboration with Engineer Armenia, where we implemented development projects that contribute to innovation and sustainability in underserved communities, and to Kenya, where we partnered with the Endana Secondary School to lead a sanitation project, building latrines and hand-washing stations.”
In its postpandemic revival, Engineers Without Borders at UC Irvine has taken to such smaller-scale projects as collaborating with UCLA’s chapter for wetland cleanups at Jack Dunster Marine Biological Reserve in Long Beach and volunteering at food banks like Community Action Partnership of Orange County with the UCI Engineering Alumni Society.
However, the group has also begun to travel again. Their most recent abroad projects are based in Tijuana, Mexico, where, alongside other organizations, Anteaters are building houses for families in need. Through these trips, the co-presidents say, students can see how some of the principles they’re learning at UC Irvine operate in real life. However, what the cohort values most is serving others through an engineering capacity.
“Every community, every person, should be able to live in a house, with clothes on their back and fresh running and drinkable water,” Mora says. “It’s nice to be a part of that impact – to see the reaction when we hand a family the key to their home and they open the door for the first time.”
In working together toward a common goal during these builds, the club has also fostered a tight-knit group of students, connected via a mutual passion for making change.
“You can find a lot of community in the people who are willing to sacrifice their time to work on a project that’s solely for the benefit of others. That’s where a lot of the spirit of our organization comes from,” Vander Veen says.
Looking to the future, the leaders of Engineers Without Borders at UC Irvine hope to expand its outreach, branching into other specializations such as mechanical engineering and computer science to build wind farms or install solar panels. However, their primary goal is to travel to other countries to carry out new projects.
An upcoming venture will enable them to do just that. In collaboration with the Orange County chapter, Anteaters will be traveling to Ecuador in mid-2026. Volunteers are currently designing and will later implement a water filtration system for the La Mocora community in Jama to provide potable water to approximately 140 families.
“It’s all about figuring out ways to sustain things – people, the environment, our planet – to better this world,” Mora says. “There’s so much we can learn from talking to others and helping communities thrive and develop by fulfilling their most basic needs.”
