In May 2001, the EWB/LUTW team arrived in Nepal with little more than the clothes on their backs and 4,000 white-light-emitting diodes. Accompanied by guides and porters, they trekked into the clouds, pushing through foliage spotted with blood-sucking leeches lured by the monsoon rains. Their destination: a series of remote mountain villages, all without electricity. Their goal: the installation of safe, sustainable residential lighting in the hopes it will increase youth literacy. No lighting means children can't study after dark.

	The homemade lamps are inexpensive and virtually unbreakable

Inexpensive and virtually unbreakable, white-light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) are the future of lighting, be it in a remote Nepalese hut or the traffic lights of Los Angeles. Unlike the traditional light bulbs still favoured in North America, WLEDs have an average lifetime of 100,000 hours (that's 5 hours of use per day for over 50 years, with minimal recharging). More importantly, unlike the kerosene lamps so widely used in developing nations, WLEDs do not explode. (Kerosene lamps kill hundreds of people each year -- "they're very similar to what we know as a Molotov cocktail," Shivji notes.) Using locally manufactured materials -- and in some cases, old rice bowls -- Shivji and his fellow travelers worked from dusk till dawn, assembling WLED lamps (nine of the button-sized mini-bulbs go into each lamp) and teaching the villagers how to recharge batteries using simple bicycle-wheel pedal generators. Evenings were spent enjoying the villagers' "phenomenal hospitality," and instructing children in the finer points of "Haas-Haas-Kukra." (That's "Duck-Duck-Goose" to Western tongues.)

From Nepal, the team traveled to Sri Lanka and India. Assignments changed as often as the landscape and language, but whatever the technological challenge -- whether devising humane ways to foil nocturnal crop raids by ingenious elephants, or installing emergency lighting systems in hospitals prone to mid-surgery blackouts -- Shivji says their focus remained the same: real-world solutions.

"I'm learning about light diodes in class right now," he says, "but EWB allows me to look at applications in a totally different sense than I do in school. I think that's the essence of engineering: it's not necessarily dealing with, say, the specific transistors that you've learned about in class, but it's about being able to problem-solve and to apply your knowledge.

Children in Nepal gather round the pedal generators for WLED lamps

"For example, the pedal generators were handmade in Nepal, so each was unique. Once, when we separated to go to two different villages, the porters took the wrong pieces, so we found ourselves in a village, sitting in the middle of 30 kids who were all waiting to see a result, and thinking, 'OK, now what do we do?' That's an aspect of engineering that I didn't even think about before." (With a little bit of know-how, a lot of elbow grease and a hammer Shivji did solve his generator problem.)

In only two years, Engineers Without Borders has grown to over 1,500 members and 15 Canadian chapters, with plans to expand into the U.S., Costa Rica, Australia and the Philippines. Although young even by this fledgling organization's standards, EWB-McGill successfully bid to host this year's national conference, held at the end of January. Titled "Bridging the Gap: Engineering Solutions for the Developing World," the conference attracted 165 delegates, and featured keynote addresses by Claire Dansereau (Executive Director of the global social justice organization CUSO), John Stackhouse (Globe and Mail political correspondent), and Light Up The World's Dr. Irvine-Halliday. Discussions ranged from specific technical challenges to building new chapters.

John Gruzleski, McGill's Dean of Engineering, is impressed with everything EWB has achieved in such a short time. "Alex Conliffe and her team are among the most enthusiastic students whom I have had the privilege to work with," he says. "Their insight, judgment and business abilities are amazing considering many of them are only halfway through their programs. They are a credit to engineering students."