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MEET THE TEAM
From engineering to global health to data-driven advocacy, our team works together to improve living conditions and find community-led solutions grounded in health, dignity, and safety.
With a variety of backgrounds, our team works to ensure that every project is designed to meet the real and urgent needs of the communities we work with.
How we began - It all started with a podcast
In November 2019, an episode of This American Life aired, highlighting an informal refugee camp that had formed in Matamoros, Mexico. The conditions in the camp were stark, and home to thousands of asylum-seeking families. Here they faced severe shortages of essential resources like clean water and sanitation.
Three engineers—Erin Hughes, Christa Cook, and Chloe Rastatter—each heard the episode, and though they were strangers at the time, they felt a shared calling to learn more.
After reaching out to the on-the-ground humanitarian organization featured in the podcast, they learned that the camp had no technical or engineering support. The organization connected the three women, inviting them to the border to see how they might be able to support their work.
In June 2020, Erin, Christa, and Chloe met for the first time at the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the next few months, they worked together to complete critical projects alongside asylum-seekers, Global Response Management (GRM), the Resource Center of Matamoros (RCM), and other local NGOs. Driven by a shared vision of dignity and health for all, they used their engineering backgrounds to address the camp’s most pressing needs, from clean water access to safe sanitation.
Solidarity Engineering was inaugurated in November 2020, one year after the podcast aired that inspired them to change their lives. Solidarity Engineering was born—a response not only to the humanitarian crisis at the border but also to the urgent need for sustainable, community-centered solutions for communities affected by displacement.