Participants engage in communal activities during the trip.
Doha, Qatar: As the sun dipped below the towering peaks of the Himalayas, a warm glow settled over a team of sixteen Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) staff and faculty in the beautiful mountainside village of Thaprek, Nepal.
After seven days of service, the participants in the flagship Community Engagement Program at GU-Q enjoyed the deep sense of pride and satisfaction of having completed the construction of an energy source for the village by drawing on the combined skills and experiences of every member of their team.
This unique experience, drawing on GU-Q’s mission and values, was co-crafted by the Offices of Human Resources and Student Life in response to the vision of Dean Safwan Masri to foster a stronger sense of community and belonging within the university. “While we all contribute in our separate ways towards the Georgetown mission, we sometimes don’t see the efforts of others within our work. This experience created a unique bond between participants from different departments within the university, who don’t regularly work together, to appreciate our sense of collective purpose and identity,” said Nicole Heinz, Director of Human Resources.
GU-Q worked with World Volunteers to organise the project on the ground in Nepal, focusing on sustainability and women empowerment through the act of building a biogas facility. This project creates a sustainable, closed-loop system that turns animal waste into a clean source of gas for cooking and heating, minimizing the dependency on firewood, and providing a more sustainable source of gas for cooking and heating. The result eliminates the need for women and children to spend hours collecting firewood, allowing for more time spent on schoolwork, play, or income-generating activities.
“Our takeaway was on how the community in Thaprek identified a gap and used local knowledge to fix it. It was inspiring to see how the local community believed in the power of the collective to fix complex problems - an analogy that we can take back to our campus and in our classrooms,” said Jibin Koshy, Education Enrichment Manager.
“Building the biogas dome and, out of necessity, digging a giant hole, was much more than just the act of physical labor,” recalled Andrew Henley, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Strategy Advisor. “The shared commitment to a common goal and the belief that the project was important to the community created a magical bond among the GU-Q participants. Blisters and sore muscles became badges of honour, as everyone volunteered repeatedly to push their physical limits.”
