Designing a new future

Riding a bicycle around town to charge your cell phone or power a lamp may seem like a novelty in the U.S., but it is an answer to a need for electricity in developing countries. 

Trussville-based Designs for Hope, a non-profit engineering design ministry, has spent the last six years developing relationships with churches and ministries overseas to provide sustainable energy and clean water to those in need. 

“It’s not just, ‘Hey, we’re going to come give you things,’ but it’s, ‘Hey, let us help you improve your life physically, but also improve your ministry and in a spiritual sense come alongside you to empower you to do the work you’re doing in your community,’” said Chris Bond, executive director.

The organization grew out of Bond’s desire to do more than just design and research for a firm. 

“I was just making a company wealthy,” Bond said. “I kind of had a crisis. Was that what I was made for?”

Bond said he felt a call to ministry, which led to a career in teaching. The idea of Designs for Hope came in 2011, four years into his time as engineering teacher at Hewitt-Trussville High School. He’d teach until 4 p.m., spend time with his family until 9 or 10, and then work in his basement on designs until nearly 1 a.m. some nights. 

He started with a way to charge a battery during the day, as people pedaled their bicycles. It was a game-changer for areas where people would spend half a day traveling to a neighboring village in order to pay to charge their cell phone. Designs For Hope has also supplied solar panels as part of its ministry to provide sustainable electricity. Solar panels, which can be provided through the ministry for $150, can save a family up to 25 percent of their expenses, according to Bond.

“The solar panels by Designs For Hope is a huge support where people can harness power and light and then get rid of the toxic candles from kerosene that are a hazard to health,” said Bishop Tom Kilza of Evangelical Orthodox Church in Uganda, through a Designs For Hope video. “The lives of children and pastors have improved because the children are able to read at night and therefore, their grades have been increased.”

Clean water is the other main focus of the ministry since the first days, including building a filtration system in a container the size of a five-gallon bucket. Now, Bond is looking to improve water wells that are in need of repair. Multiple organizations, including Rural Water Supply Net and Oxford University, estimate between 30-40 percent of water pumps installed in Africa over the last 20 years do not work and have not been repaired. 

Designs for Hope is currently field-testing a system to monitor the amount of water being pulled from each pump, which will send data via text message to analyze how well the pump is working.

“We want to go into a community and provide enough clean water that everyone has availability and access to clean water, and then we can monitor and keep up with it so that everything is truly sustainable,” Bond said.

The first trip the organization took was to Uganda, but the organization has grown to include formal partnerships with ministries that have no other U.S. support in four other countries: Kenya, Sri Lanka, India and Nicaragua. In all, they have designs in eight countries, some through U.S.-based or U.S.-supported organizations that have purchased their products.

Bond’s brother-in-law and friend Matthew Michalke, who teaches engineering at Hewitt-Trussville Middle School, serves as the director of administration. Similar to Bond, he began his career as a professional engineer and then found teaching after a call to ministry before Designs for Hope began.

Michalke says the organization “extends beyond what most think of a Christian ministry, to basically be an engineering design firm for those who need it the most, but could never afford it.”

Through their connection with the Trussville City Schools engineering classes, Bond and Michalke have taught the concepts they use at Designs For Hope. 

“We’re able to expose students in our community with an understanding that people are struggling with basic necessities in this world, and we are able to do something about that, if we choose,” Bond said. 

Michalke added, “I think a lot of people have the misconception that engineering is about design, but it’s not about people. We try to make that connection for them that we’re designing for people and trying to impact these people, empower them, save lives and prolong lives.”

This past summer, Designs for Hope installed a deep-water well in a community of 1,200 people in Kit Mikayi, Kenya, about 20 miles outside Kisumu. Residents of the community carry 40-pound cans back to their homes to have clean water. Students at HTHS, many of whom studied under Bonds, are working on a project to design an all-terrain cart to carry a large quantity of water buckets through the community. 

“If it works well, we will try to implement that project this summer when we go back to Kenya,” Bond said.

While the designs have been nice, they say the biggest impact has simply been their presence in the communities they visit, such as the community in Kenya, which is away from the larger cities and had never had Westerners visit before. 

“For them, it was a life-changing impact to say, ‘You care about us enough that you’re willing to come here,’” Michalke said. “The countries we serve, these things are available if you have the means but we’re going after the people that don’t have the means and won’t ever havethe means.”

For more information about Designs For Hope, visit DesignsForHope.org or Facebook.com/DesignsForHope.