UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Members of the Penn State student chapter of Bridges to Prosperity have returned home after constructing a pedestrian footbridge near the remote village of Tucuecito, Panama.
“Overall, the trip went really well,” said project manager Jacob Rausch, senior in civil engineering. “We really connected with the community, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all learned a lot and grew as individuals.”
The 10 students spent four weeks in Tucuecito, a poverty-stricken village roughly four hours southwest of Panama City, assembling the framework for the new bridge, which is 30 meters long and one meter wide.
“It’s an “Indiana Jones” kind of bridge except with steel and concrete and with wooden decking across it,” said Rausch.
But the success of the bridge depended on far more than the students’ technical expertise, said chapter president Steve Mezzacappa, senior in architectural engineering. Building strong relationships with members of the local community was also key to the project’s success.
“We don't just go down and build a bridge for these community members,” he said. “It's all about working together and empowering one another.”
Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, the team did not complete the bridge as intended.
Rausch said when they arrived, they found out there were complications with the funding for materials.
To make up for this setback, the Bridges to Prosperity in-country manager, Jake Moriarty, worked diligently with the municipality to secure the rest of the materials, but they didn’t arrive until the final week of the month-long project, so there wasn’t enough time to finish the bridge before they left.
“We were able to complete all of the tiers and towers,” Rausch said. “We also positioned the cables and poured one anchor.”
The students made good progress in the time they had and trained community members to finish the last details after their departure.
The bridge, which was recently completed by the locals, will now provide much needed access to education and health care. Previously, the village only had steady access during the dry season when the Tucue River at the village’s edge was low enough to cross.
“Before we came, there was no bridge in Tucuecito,” Rausch said. “The road just went down in the river, so when it flooded, vehicles couldn’t cross. In order to access health care and schooling beyond sixth grade year-round, they needed a bridge to get to a larger city.”
Even though the students weren’t able to finish the project themselves, they didn’t let the materials stunt their educational experience. They chose instead to focus on learning from the locals.
“Every night, we would hang out with the community,” said Rausch.
The students would play sports like softball and soccer with the villagers.
“Steve and I even played in a softball tournament,” Rausch said. “Since not much work could be done on the bridge, playing sports with the community really helped us connect.”
The students hope additional planning for next year’s trip will allow them to finish the bridge before returning home.
This project was co-sponsored by Turner Construction and the FIGG Engineering Group.
The national Bridges to Prosperity organization was founded in 2001, after founder Ken Frantz saw a photo in National Geographic magazine that moved him to form the organization. The image showed men dangling precariously, using ropes to pull each other across a wide, high and broken bridge span over a portion of the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia.
Bridges to Prosperity envisions a world where poverty caused by rural isolation no longer exists. Their programs provide access to health care, education and markets by teaching communities how to build footbridges over impassable rivers, in partnership with organizations and professionals.