Five Ohio University engineering students will be traveling to Ghana, a country in West Africa, in June to work on a humanitarian building project through the Engineers Without Borders program.

Electrical engineering majors Jonathan Bebb and Cy Cost, mechanical engineering majors T.J. Cyders and Katie Melton and civil engineering major Jennifer Phillips will spend three weeks in the village of Maase-Offinso working with the community to build two houses for teachers.

“This is our first international project,” said Jeff Giesey, founder and advisor to the Engineers Without Borders chapter at OU. A national non-profit organization, Engineers Without Borders organizes projects to improve quality of life in places like Maase-Offinso, which needs adequate housing to accommodate teachers, according to an OU Outlook press release.

The 20 members of the club have worked throughout the year to develop plans for the project, Giesey said.

“We have different teams — water, power, structure and logistics teams,” said Phillips, a senior. Groups met separately to work with Russ College of Engineering professors on the plans, and met together once a week, she said.

The village is providing materials and labor for the project, Giesey said.

The Engineers Without Borders chapter has been holding fundraisers to offset the $3,800-per-person cost of the trip, Giesey said. On April 29, the organization will play host to a Chinese Silent Auction at Walter Hall from noon to 3:30 p.m., in which students can buy $5 tickets to win gift certificates to Uptown restaurants, a mountain bike and African artifacts. The chapter has set a goal of raising $50,000 to assist travel and construction expenses for the trip, according to the Web site www.ohiou.edu/~ewbohio.

Project plans are in the finalizing stage, Melton said, and Engineers Without Borders must approve the OU chapter’s plans before construction can start, Melton said.

Because this is the OU chapter’s first project outside of Ohio, Phillips said one of the group’s biggest challenges is not knowing what to expect.

“There are so many unknowns,” she said. “It’s hard to get data, since we’re so far away.”

The trip was coordinated as a study abroad program with students receiving five hours for participating, Giesey said. He said he worked to develop the project with Nana K. Owusu-Kwarteng, the village’s chief who recently finished his Ph.D. at OU with the Institute for the African Child.

Melton was part of a group that traveled to Maase-Offinso for two weeks over Thanksgiving break, where they stayed at the chief’s house and interacted with villagers.

“It’s nice that they want to establish a relationship,” she said, adding that the trip in June could open the door for future projects.