Christian Engineers in Development is a Christian professional consultancy service dedicated to development work with overseas communities, and through service, to witness to the Christian Faith

About CED

CED enables us, as Christian engineers, to use our skills and experience to help the world’s poorest people. We also connect UK churches to overseas neighbours they can support and work with.

What We Do

CED offers professional engineering support to people in rural areas of the developing world who are trying to provide basic infrastructure for their communities.

Most of our work is in water supply projects. We also work in the closely related area of sanitation, develop small scale energy systems (mostly hydro) and work on structures like buildings and bridges.

The breadth of our network of members means we can address a very broad range of engineering-related projects. Have a look at some of the projects we have completed around the world, or find out more about how we go about our work by clicking on the link to the CED website.

Alan Michell's visits

Alan Michell, a member of Crawley Baptist Church and a Trustee of CED, has made several visits to Sierra Leone and Rwanda since early 2016 together with links to communities  adjacent to Rwnda in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Churches visited ranged from a tent in Pastor Charles Semwaga’s driveway, to a bamboo framework over which a tarpaulin would be placed for shelter if needed, a 1000+ auditorium run by the Christian Life Assemblies Church in Kigali, and an Anglican Cathedral in Byumba in the mountainous north of Rwanda. Many churches visited had part finished construction programmes under way to provide larger facilities, but many had halted for lack of funds to complete. Due to government regulations on places of worship, some churches have been closed due to inadequate facilities such as car parking space, quality of the building or lack of WC facilities. Despite these restrictions a warm welcome is always received whenever joining a local Church community for worship. In Rwanda CED are working through Pastor Charles Semwaga and the Faith Center Ministries group of Churches which serve the poorer, rural communities, mainly in the Eastern Region of Rwanda. In Sierra Leone CED is working in conjunction with James Fallah-Williams of Practical Tools Initiative, a UK charity based in the UK but also established in Freetown the capital of Sierra Leone. In both cases we are working with local evangelical churches independent of any of the major denominations.

Due to the Covid-19 restrictions no visits have been possible since January 2020, however contact continues with the local churches as we seek God’s will for both current and future projects.

Rwanda

After  3 years of planning and funding applications, the Mayange Project, to provide a more reliable water supply to a returnee community in the village of Kavumu in the Eastern Region of Rwanda, made a good start at the beginning of January 2019. A training programme was held over two weeks during January to teach the local villagers the skills of constructing Ferro-cement tanks. A Bulk water Storage tank has been constructed to overcome the difficulties of erratic and unreliable mains water supply and 50 household rainwater harvesting have been installed. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic work had to stop for much of 2020. However, work recommenced in April 2021 on the remaining work on house improvements to some of the poorest families in the village.

In addition to the CED Projects, CBC and Alan Michell have been supporting Faith Center Ministries in the re-building of their community church in Kavumu. The main Church building was completed in early 2020, however due to government regulations worship meetings were not permitted until toilets and other covid facilities were installed. In April 2021 CBC were able to provide funds to enable these facilities to be built.

Sierra Leone

Exploratory work continues in conjunction with Practical Tools Initiative (PTI) on three separate potential projects. PTI is a UK charity based at Fareham Community Church working mainly in providing resources to schools, medical centres and the disadvantaged or disabled communities in Sierra Leone and have three full time local workers in the country.

Manowa is a village of approximately 12,000 inhabitants with no potable water supply and very basic sanitation facilities. CED, working with (PTI) originally planned to provide a pipe water supply by capping a stream in the hills above the village and feeding by gravity to storage tanks and tap points around the village.  However it was found to be extremely difficult to find a funding source for the £250,000 needed for the scheme. A revised scheme using up to 5 x  deep drilled boreholes has been costed at £125,000 and funding applications are currently under consideration from several sources.

Gbonka is a smaller village in the Lungi area close to the Freetown International Airport which also has no mains water supply. Existing hand dug wells were contaminated or dry. Water was obtained from a nearby stream which is also used for the daily wash. In December 2019 a deep borehole was drilled and continues to provide a clean water supply to the community.

Rotifunk is a new project, where the village is again in desperate need of an improved water supply. A sophisticated water collection and distribution system installed in the 1960’s was ransacked during the Civil War and is now totally unusable as a drinking water supply. Untreated water is collected from the damaged dam area which is also used for communal washing. The first stage of this project is to undertake a baseline survey to evaluate the scope of the need and the best way forward. This survey is being undertaken by PTI, following which a project proposal will be generated by CED and funding applications submitted.

Tanzania

 Nyashoizi is a small village in a remote area of north west Tanzania and was reached by  6 hours of road travel from Kigali in Rwanda crossing the border at Rusumo. Help was requested from Father Vitalis of the Catholic church in the village which was in need of an improved water supply.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

A request for training assistance in the construction of ferro-cement rainwater tanks was requested by Pastors from the Assemblies of God Church in the DRC. As it was not possible to safely travel into the DRC, meetings and the training project were held in Cyangugu which borders with Bukavu in the DRC and were hosted by the Anglican Church of Rwanda in Cyangugu.