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Engineers Without Borders

The Navajo Mountain Bike Initiative

We have partnered with various communities of the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona to provide them with a source of ecotourism and outdoor activities for the children of the community, as they have very few recreational and after-school options for children. Tuba City, our primary partner, is located about 3.5 hours north of Tempe. We have decided to use cycling as an outdoor activity that will be used locally for the children in the form of a pump track and a loop designed for high schoolers. Pay-to-ride mountain biking trails will be surveyed and constructed to attract tourists to foster a local, sustainable economic sector. Our goal is to develop the Navajo Nation into a Mountain Biking hotspot as a means to stimulate their economy through ecotourism.

The Navajo Nation currently faces two major problems, one being a self-proclaimed public health crisis, and the other being incredible economic hardship. The nation has a staggering unemployment rate of 42%, and a poverty rate of over 43%. These numbers are incredibly high and call for a change to be made. However, as obvious as it may seem, the solution to their economic crisis must be sustainable and environmentally friendly, and it needs to stimulate activity within the youth of the nation.

Our work at EWB focuses on creating sustainable solutions to these problems, with a positive effect on the community that reverberates long after we are gone.

In order to combat these issues, our solution is to incorporate mountain biking into their Nation. We are currently developing a series of mountain biking trails across the Nation with some reaching as far north as Kayenta. These pay-to-ride trails will be 8-12 miles long and will bring tourists to the area and improve the local economy. We will build pump tracks at multiple sites across the Navajo community to develop their biking skills and introduce them to the sport.

When admiring the breathtaking scenic landscape of the nation, it is difficult to not compare the geographic makeup to that of a mountain biking powerhouse, Moab. Moab is a site in Utah that generates over $15 million annually in revenue through mountain biking and is a very popular tourist destination. Our dream for this program is for it to become something that can live to up the very best in mountain biking. In doing so, we can truly change the lives of these communities forever.

Scouting the Tuba City Trail

Overlooking Tuba City

Visualizing our Dream

The main issue we are addressing is the health and economic problems that occur in the Navajo Nation as their limited resources do not allow for recreational exercise or many job opportunities. Over the past couple of semesters, we have made multiple trips to Shonto, our first location, to work on two pump track projects. We have also been working with the school to help develop bike maintenance skills with the students. We modified a storage container at the high school to hold 24 bikes in a weather-tight and organized manner. Our contact in the community is reaching out to the vice principal of the elementary school in Tuba City, being our primary target as we are able to effectively address their needs with respect to their property. Our primary contact is the school superintendent of the Tuba City School District. She has the perspective to appreciate how cycling can enhance a student’s life and the authority to integrate our projects within existing school programs.

Our plan for this semester is to continue construction in Tuba City. Tuba City has a large lot next to the middle school to accommodate 2 large tracks over the course of the next two years. Currently, we have designs for these tracks and are in the process of 3D printing them at ASU to aid in visual representations. Last semester, we began our construction of the first beginner track, suitable for grade school children to ride on. The build process is labor intensive with 17 ASU students and Tuba City schools providing heavy equipment with operators. We are shaping the dirt features of the track, using cement in high-wear zones to ensure the durability of the structures. In addition to constructing these tracks and donating bikes, we are developing an operations & maintenance document for the Tuba City schools so they can properly take care of the track once it is finished.

RECENT UPDATES:

Plotting the Track

Identifying the Features

The Team

Constructing a Burm

Watering the Features

Current Construction

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Officer Contact

Presidents - Kathleen Myers-Haeussler & Tyler Norkus

Vice Presidents - Tatum McMillan & August Westby

Treasurer - Gabe Dryden

Secretary - Ellie Boyer

Social Media Manger - Rachael Zhan

Equipment Manager - Nicholas Parrish

Historian - Sheena Kroodsma

Recruitment Manager - Max Westby

Fundraising Chair - Ethan Sheard

Outreach Chair - Ricardo Solorzano

Event Manager - Kaleb Tefera

Head of K-12 Outreach - Zain Syed

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