Annelies Tjebbes

Annelies Tjebbes’ junior fellowship with Engineers Without Borders took her to Bogandé, Burkina Faso to help the local women’s association with a waste management program they established 15 years ago to generate some income while contributing to the health of their community.

When Tjebbes arrived, the main outreach activity of the women’s association was to go door-to-door with pictures of poor and proper waste disposal. Sometimes people understood the importance of the women’s message and made changes, if they could afford to, while others laughed at the women.

“I did some research on techniques of encouraging effective behavioural change, for example influential spokespeople, peer pressure and rewards, and made a presentation to the women,” said Tjebbes, an undergraduate student in biomedical electrical engineering. “They came up with some creative ways of influencing people, like getting the head of the market to become part of the project. He got the merchants on board and installed waste bins in the market.”

The women’s association members are also mothers and grandmothers with responsibilities at home, so sometimes they can’t volunteer for the waste management program. Other times it’s raining too heavily for the women to take the locally manufactured donkey carts out to collect waste.

“Despite the challenges, it’s the women’s initiative and they work very hard on it,” said Tjebbes “My contribution was providing an outside perspective. As an engineer, I’m able to observe what can be improved.”