How Codeup Alumni are Helping to Make Water

Imagine having a kit mailed to you with all the necessary components to make contaminated water clean. Cool, huh? Four of our alumni are helping to make that possible by partnering with the non-profit Elequa to design a website for their Make Water program. With this project, these Codeup alumni have the potential to make a global impact: Jacqueline Murralles, James Murralles, Ted Zamarron, and Carlos Teller.

How Elequa is Making a Difference

The Make Water program inspires, educates, and equips people that want to make a tangible difference in the world. Elequa puts together DIY kits with the tools to purify water and delivers them to people that need them, locally and abroad. This project is also given to students in the San Antonio area, who in turn are challenged to research, tweak, and further develop the kits to make them better and more accessible. These problem-solving challenges engage students in the STEM field, inspiring teamwork and collaboration while making a difference that they can be proud of: helping to provide clean water.

How Codeup Alumni are Making a Difference

Currently, the Make Water program lacks a platform to house and share the data gathered by students to improve the kits, while also challenging other community members for further development. They needed help with the gamification of these processes to make participation more engaging. That’s where Codeup alumni Jacqueline Murralles, James Murralles, Ted Zamarron, and Carlos Teller came in. They are helping Elequa to build an open-source application for the Make Water program that turns community participation into a game where users can level up as they contribute and collaborate through an array of real-world challenges in water research, coding, hardware innovation, and creative storytelling.Did we mention that they are working on this project as volunteers, as Codeup alumni often do? Codeup students are always looking for ways to challenge themselves, sharpen their skills, and make a difference, and that continues after graduation. To see more of the projects our students have worked on (and what you can do, too, with Codeup), check out these capstone presentations.