德州大学生建造廉价棚屋

A refugee camp built by students and volunteers spreads over Southern Methodist University's expanse of green lawns and live oaks. The affordable shelters are designed to be used by the poor as well as survivors of war and natural disasters.

从4月17号到23号，德州城市达拉斯的南部卫理公会大学20多名学生和一小组志愿者一直住在他们在校园里搭建的一个临时难民营中。他们建造了一些价格低廉的庇护所，可供穷人以及战争和自然灾害的幸存者居住。

The diverse structures are clustered around a white United Nations tent. A six-sided poly-propylene and aluminum house is adjacent to a dome-shaped igloo made of sandbags. Next door is a recycled plastic-brick-and-mud hut. SMU senior engineering major Carson Linstead, who helped erect the dozen different buildings, spent a week living in them.

南部卫理公会大学的绿色草坪和橡树之间，分布着一些各式各样的建筑，它们环绕在一个白色的联合国帐篷周围。一个由聚丙烯和铝材料建造的六边形房屋和一个由沙包建造的圆顶小屋靠在一起。旁边是一个由回收塑料袋制作的棚屋。包括土木工程学专业四年纪学生卡尔森·林斯特德在内的南部卫理公会大学的学生帮助建造了十几个不同的建筑。他们在里面住了一个星期。

"The biggest thing is I'm getting a perspective about what's going on in different parts of the world," he says. "Whenever you're an SMU student, it's easy to get caught up in the city and kind of your own little bubble, your own little world. Whenever you're an engineer, there are so many problems you're capable of solving."

林斯特德说：“最大的收获是，我对世界不同地方发生的事情有了了解。你如果是南部卫理公会大学的学生，你很容易陷在城市生活和自己的小世界里。但是，你如果是工程师，你就有能力解决很多问题。”

Problems such as lack of shelter or power in post-Katrina New Orleans, Haiti's Port-au-Prince after the earthquake, or impoverished villages in the developing world.

例如，卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良市、地震后的海地的太子港，以及发展中世界的贫困乡村缺少庇护所和电力。

"By the time we reach 2020, there's going to be about 1.7 billion people living in slums and so we would like to effect change," says Stephanie Hunt, co-founder of the Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanities at SMU. The institute was established to solve problems of the poor in the United States and around the world through engineering, collaboration and the free market. It helped fund the village on SMU's campus.

斯塔芬妮·亨特是南部卫理公会大学工程学和人文学亨特研究所的联合创办人。她说：“到2020年，将会有大约17亿人居住在贫民窟里。因此，我们希望能带来一些改变。”亨特说，开设这个研究所的目的是通过工程学、相互合作和自由市场等办法，解决美国和全世界穷人面临的一些问题。亨特的研究所资助建造这个难民村，为的是向人们展示一些解决办法。

"We would like to inspire the next generation of engineer, entrepreneur, anthropologist, lawyer, anyone who can help," she says. That extends to helping find solutions to every day problems facing some of the world's poorest people, such as access to clean water.

她说：“我们希望鼓励下一代工程师、企业家、人类学家、律师，以及任何有能力帮助消灭贫困的人，也许不是消灭贫困，而是消灭极端贫困，因为贫困总会存在，不太可能根除。我们愿意通过合作，帮助解决穷人日常生活中面临的一些问题，比如说纯净水的问题。”

The little campus village has a low-pressure, low-cost water purifier capable of creating enough drinking water for 3,000 people a day. Student Linstead points to solar panels on the roof of a pre-packaged shelter, and explains they can be used to re-charge cell phones.

在这个小小的难民村里，有一个低压、低成本的水净化器，能够净化供3千人每天使用的饮用水。林斯特德指着一个庇护所屋顶上的太阳能板解释说，这些太阳能板可以用来给手机充电。

"So what most people don't know is, whenever you go over to these countries like Kenya and places like that, that cell phones are actually a huge, huge commodity," he says. "While these people almost have no money, they all have cell phones but they don't have any electricity to charge them."

他说：“大多数人不知道，在肯尼亚这样的国家，手机是一种非常昂贵的商品。人们虽然没有钱，但是有手机，问题是，他们没有电给手机充电。”