Community Outreach

There are opportunities for members of the campus community to connect with local and international communities on sustainability issues. Maintaining an up-to-date list of community outreach opportunities is a challenge but many of the organizations listed here host spontaneous community outreach projects. At least two organizations have ongoing community outreach projects open to all students. Read their stories below to learn more about what they do.

Students Organizing for Sustainability

The eco-friendly organization gives students the opportunity to advocate for sustainable practices and works with the administration and other governing bodies to implement positive change on campus.

In the past, members of SOS have worked to improve on-campus recycling, bring more nutritious, local, organic and vegetarian foods to the community, convert the shuttles to run on renewable fuel, and get new sources of clean, efficient energy to the institute. SOS creates an effective network of student activists by forming alliances with other like-minded organizations.

According to Queen, members of SOS develop leadership and organizational skills that will allow them to continue advocating sustainable practices long after graduation. more...

Engineers without Borders

Engineering Students Without Borders at Georgia Tech is a chapter of Engineers Without Borders-USA. EWB-USA acts as a project facilitator by connecting communities in developing nations with groups of students, faculty, professional mentors and non-governmental organizations who assist in developing sustainable solutions for engineering problems. Typical projects include, but are not limited to: building construction, installation of solar energy panels, drip irrigation, wells, latrines, and water distribution systems.

Engineering Students Without Borders Aid Town in Honduras more...

Tech Civil Engineers Advise Angola on Environment more...

The Student Movement for Real Change

The Student Movement for Real Change seeks “to be a leadership development organization that provides students in the United States a vehicle to advocate for positive change in neglected regions of the world,” according to www.studentmovementusa.org.

“I found the Student Movement’s website and decided that as a college student, starting a chapter at Tech would be the best way I could help those rural citizens of South Africa and Kenya,” said Fengning Yu, president of SMRC at GT and first-year International Affairs major.

According to Yu, the chapter’s goal is to help the children of Kenya and South Africa who are at risk of being exposed to contaminated water.

“The majority of Kenyans who die annually from water contamination are children…we are cleaning up water in Atlanta to [parallel] the importance of water all around the world and making both Atlanta neighborhoods and ourselves aware of the Kenya Water Crisis,” Yu said.

To date, SMRC at Tech has completed its first project; a clean-up of the pond at Glen Emerald Park. Some of SMRC’s upcoming initiatives include pen pal and mentoring projects with students of Atlanta public schools and campus wide film screenings to raise campus awareness of the water crisis in Kenya and the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. more...