The community of Les Anglais is the population center of the district of Les Anglais comprising an
estimated 25,000 households in Southwest Haiti. Our Saviors Lutheran Church (OSLC), an
organization that has been involved in the community for over twenty years, invited the Portland,
Oregon Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Portland Professional Chapter to the community to
address an identified drinking water problem. The problem was identified at a health clinic
conducted by OSLC in 2007 in which the OSLC medical team identified a high incidence of diarrhea
among children, particularly children under five, and hypothesized that the cause of diarrhea was
due to the community not having access to safe drinking water. Subsequent to this request, the
community’s gravity spring-fed piped drinking water system, already in major disrepair from years
of maintenance neglect, was rendered useless following the 2008 hurricanes. To address the
imminent need of initiating repairs to the drinking water system and to commence its initial
project assessment a team of health and engineer professionals from the (EWB) Portland
Professional chapter traveled to Les Anglais, Haiti in January/February 2009. The
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