A group of welding students at the Weyburn campus of Southeast Regional College will begin researching and developing a hydraulic press mechanism that in the end will assist groups of women in Kenya to build themselves better quality housing.

In order to utilize the expertise and abilities of the welding class in Weyburn, HELP International has given the class a $5,000 grant to stage a competition for students to come up with the best and most efficient fibreboard press, using hydraulics to press down recycled newsprint pulp to make the fibreboards which can then be used for the interior walls and ceilings of houses.

Part of the competition will also include modifying the manual and bicycle-driven paper mills used to produce the pulp that is used in making fibreboards.

The students are also going to work on creating a plastic post manufacturing unit that uses a metal pipe mold, a semi-molten heating system and hydraulic compression to create plastic posts and bricks that can be used to replace wooden materials currently used in Kenya.

"The competition is to create entrepreneurial opportunities in Kenya, to increase the technology of the machines they'll be using in Kenya," said Trent Jordens, business and industry consultant for the college, in announcing the competition on Monday afternoon.

According to Kabuya Muepu of HELP International, based on a farm just west of the Souris Valley grounds in Weyburn, the emphasis on the creations the students are going to come up with is keeping them low-cost and low-tech.

"The technologies must be affordable to groups of 10 women-led Home Associations in Kenya whose individual household incomes average $30 to $100 per month," he said. "The technologies create the possibility of arresting an environmental emergency of waste management breakdown, rivers laden with sewer wastes and household garbage. The innovations allow each group of 10 Home Associations to segregate their waste into nine types."

The various types of waste, ranging from food waste to paper, plastic, cloth, metal and tree/vegetable seeds, can each be made into new products that will help the Kenyans.

Currently Kenyans use a 24-by-24-inch fibreboard press which they stand on to compress the water out of newsprint pulp, and which then takes about five days to dry out. The college welding class is to come up with a press unit that is four-by-eight feet in size, and will use hydraulics to press down the pulp, which will remove more of the water and shorten up the drying time of the fibreboard. The new board will be much larger and stronger, and will therefore have more applications for use by Kenya's construction industry.

Of the $5,000 grant being provided to the college, the competition will award $2,000 for first place, $1,000 for second and $750 for third place. The remaining $1,250 will be used towards materials to be used by the students. In addition, Stewart Steel has contributed $2,000 towards materials, and Mryglod Steel has contributed $1,500.

The awards and winning machine design will be unveiled at the end of the school year for the class, in mid-May of 2005.