Ali Shivji celebrated his twenty-first birthday by waking at 5 a.m. to help small children harvest chicken eggs, then bundling white-light-emitting diodes until sunset. Granted, it may not have been the most traditional of parties, but there was ice cream. And it was an experience Shivji will never forget.

	The Engineers Without Borders McGill team: Louis Dorval, Alex Conliffe and Ali Shivji PHOTOS COURTESY LIGHT UP THE WORLD

As the first intern of the McGill chapter of Engineers Without Borders, the fourth-year electrical engineering student spent 14 weeks installing low-cost, low-energy lighting in remote villages in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Alexandra Conliffe, the president of EWB-McGill, hopes Shivji's experience will prove the first of many such success stories. Conliffe, a second-year mechanical engineering student, founded the McGill chapter in February of last year. The previous summer, Conliffe had been searching for an opportunity to work in a developing nation, and approached the Waterloo-based EWB.

"I was looking for an internship," she recalls. "They were looking for someone at McGill to set up a chapter. And so," she says, laughing at the turnaround, "I ended up starting the chapter!"

EWB began at the University of Waterloo in January 2000, the brainchild of two engineering grads. Modeled after MÈdecins sans FrontiËres, EWB's mission statement is simple: "To work to improve the quality of life of people in developing nations and communities by helping find appropriate technical solutions to their challenges." EWB believes "the technology gap" (1 billion people, for example, do not have access to potable water) is a developing nation's single biggest obstacle. Furthermore, EWB views engineers -- and engineering students -- as a valuable, yet largely untapped, means of bridging this gap.

"There are very few organizations that offer engineering students internships in developing nations," explains Conliffe. "There are a lot of health-related and social work opportunities, but not much for engineering students. But, by the same token, there are a lot of engineering students who are interested in doing that kind of work."

Ali Shivji is one such student. In keeping with the Engineers Without Borders policy of partnering with like-minded organizations, Shivji's internship was a joint effort between EWB and the Light Up The World project, a humanitarian initiative started by University of Calgary engineering professor Dr. Dave Irvine-Halliday. Shivji and his brother Adil, an electrical engineering student at the University of Alberta, were so excited at the prospect of working with Irvine-Halliday that they scraped together the required $14,000 for travel expenses themselves, soliciting "everyone we could think of" for donations.