Ethical issues related to international development projects

Abstract

International service learning within engineering education is increasing in amount and visibility. There has been much work dealing with the legitimacy of service learning in engineering education. However, there has been less work dealing with ethical issues involved with engineering service learning. While there are ethical issues related to any engineering project, this paper concentrates on ethical issues inherent in the international service learning approach that has economic development as one of its goals. One issue is how the design relates to the local community. In traditional engineering design the client is clearly identified and the engineer can work to make sure the client's wishes are carried out in the design. Often engineering service learning is done with a local non-profit agency or a local government agency. In both cases they claim to represent the needs and desires of the local community that will be served by the project. The lead professor needs to make sure that this project is really needed and wanted by the people it is designed to serve. Therefore, the project really has two clients, the local agency and the local population to be served. This complicates the design process and raises ethical issues if these two groups are not in total agreement. A second major issue involves the creation of local businesses as an integral part of the project. Many service projects do not have a long term impact because they cannot be sustained by the local community. One way to deal with this is to help local people create an on-going, for-profit business that can maintain the project and provide jobs for the poor community that would not otherwise exist. We will use as an example our current work in rural Honduras. Over the last several years teams of students and faculty members have installed several micro-hydroelectric systems. This past year we have made a key part of the project the creation of a local energy company that can provide cheap electricity to the villagers as well as jobs for the local community. Our goal is to use this as a springboard to franchise this to other villages, so that they also can have the benefits of cheap electricity and local jobs. One of the ethical issues we have faced is to make sure the business is not seen as a foreign project, but an indigenous one that meets the needs of the local people. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.