The local chapter of the Tufts Engineers Without Borders student organization was founded in 2022 with the goal of bringing the international community-driven spirit of Engineers Without Borders to the local Medford/Somerville community. Through hands-on, real-world engineering projects, we partner with local organizations to design solutions to address community needs. We are committed to making a positive impact in our community by applying our technical skills as university students. Here are a few of the projects that we are currently working on in partnership with local community organizations:
Adams Elementary School
The local chapter is partnering with Adams Elementary School to transform their educational garden into an inclusive space that nurtures learning, accessibility, and a sense of community. Adams Elementary School is a small, neighborhood school serving a diverse and multilingual student body. However, their existing garden beds are not designed to accommodate young children, limiting opportunities for hands-on activities and exploration. In addition, the school’s pollinator space is underutilized and not accessible as a learning tool for students.
Our goal is to redesign the educational plant beds to create modular, child-friendly spaces that better accommodate younger students by raising plant beds, creating plant signs and much more. We also aim to diversify the plants in this space (i.e. creating an herb sensory garden) to make learning more engaging and exciting for the children. In addition, we plan to revitalize their pollinator garden by introducing a wider variety of native plants—such as goldenrods, coneflowers, and ninebark—to turn the pollinator space into an additional educational environment that supports local pollinators.
Ultimately, this project is about developing more than just a garden: we hope to cultivate civic pride, community connection, and a shared appreciation for nature.
Elizabeth Peabody House
In addition, we have partnered with the Elizabeth Peabody House – a branch of the Somerville Food Coalition – to design a supporting structure to house a new community fridge. The Elizabeth Peabody House is a nonprofit organization in the Somerville community dedicated to serving families, enabling childhood education, youth development, and food security. For this project, we’ve stepped into an engineering consulting role as design consultants on a platform to be contracted out in the city of Somerville. Through revamping their driveway area to make space for an up-scaled community fridge, we hope to provide better accessibility to food for the community partners who regularly use the fridge.
Product Design
With our new Product Design group, we are focused on designing a product that will be marketed to the greater Boston community to address a community need. This group is currently focused on researching and brainstorming products to design. Over the course of this coming semester, the group will select a product that best addresses the needs of our local community and will then design and create a prototype of this product. This prototype can then be offered to local NGOs to help them achieve their missions and benefit the local Boston area!
