The document summarizes a student project working with a local community center. The students conducted surveys of community residents to identify problems in the neighborhood. Based on the survey results, the two biggest issues were street lighting and potholes. For the lighting, the students proposed installing new LED lamps to provide brighter lighting that is more durable. For the potholes, they suggested removing existing asphalt, cleaning the road base, and re-paving using consistent pressure to prevent future pothole formation. The project provided the students experience interacting with community members and identifying practical solutions to local problems.

1. Campus Saltillo
Civic Engagement and Democracy
Bimester Project: Second Part
MGP MEP Machely Flores
06-10-2014
Erick Valdés Juárez 1380109
Daniel Alonso Fernández Sandoval 1380747
Juan Carlos Flores Oyervides 999051

2. The first part of this social project took on an introduction to what the Francisco I. Madero
Community center was, and how it works. With an optimistic attitude we hoped to get great results
to share with the community and with you, our readers.
I. Engineering approach
One of the focus points of this project is to find problems which mark the visited neighborhood.
Once this is done, the need to prioritize between them has to be attended, so a decision about
which ones we can contribute with is made.
Having meet Rocio Segura the “Community Center” administrator, we gathered in a brief meeting
with the purpose of determining the way we could approach and treat problems in the
communitarian center. Assuming a meeting would took place in our next visit (with the head
members of the neighborhood as Rocio told us), we elaborated a brief, yet effective set of questions
to help guide our assumptions of what the problems were, into a more realistic and accurate
oncoming to the situation. This is the set of questions meant to be made to the neighborhood
committee:

3. Translated to English this poll is:
With this set of questions we wanted to be able to measure the degree of satisfaction from the
neighborhood´s residents towards the Community Center and from their society. From this point
we could apply our knowledge as students of Industrial Engineering and System.
What does being an Industrial Engineer imply?
An Industrial Engineer is a professional with the mathematical, financial, organizational and
systematic knowledge that can be used to make improvements. As students from the ITESM
(Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey) we have been educated to act both
as the professional beings we are becoming, so as citizens whose involvement in the community has
to leave a good mark. The purpose of the Citizen Engagement class was to settle ourselves not just
as judges of the way our society works, but as participative members of it.
II. Community Center
In our second visit to the center we expected to meet the neighborhood`s committee as Rocio told
us. Nevertheless, the committee was not gathered together, instead the meeting decrease to five

4. people: we (the three students), Rocio Segura and the neighborhood president “Profesor Juan de
Dios G.”
II. The problem
With a sad face, fallen eyebrows and deep glasses Juan de Dios sit at the header of the table we
were around. While explaining him the problem, we saw his gestures become rigid, defensive and
taciturn, one could tell he was a reserved one. While we were explaining him the part of the project
were we would propose a solution or improvement based on what was at our reach to achieve and
provide, he rudely started confronting the idea as if we were some kind of organization that had
promised something before and never did anything to make it true. “Solutions? He asked, there are
no solutions, the Government cannot give any solutions, they just won`t listen”. Based on our
experience we can make two assumptions about this man: whether he had spent a life of struggle
to overcome life`s difficulties and never a hand appeared to help him; or he is one of those
conflictive individuals who instead of helping achieve the goal they pursue, they just make it difficult
and delay activities. The man practically said there`s nothing for students to do in the society, he
clearly does not understand the force and power universities have. Universities are the motor that
makes the country run; still and all we must stick to our project and continue presenting the facts
and opinions he mentioned. In words of Juan de Dios, “Francisco I. Madero” is a neighborhood that
does not have economic necessities, the security is quite good because there is constant police
patrolling and all the members of the blocks know themselves, so whenever they spot irregular or
suspicious activities they communicate it to the authorities. The structure of the public walls, streets
and parks is in constant maintenance due to the good communication between the Community
Center`s administrator and the City Hall. There are speed limiters which control the few but constant
traffic in the zone. The luminaries are in good condition, fully working excepting three. After all the
previous information was given to us, we went further and asked him about the Center. We wanted
to know why in our current visit and in the last one it was practically empty. The man handed us
what he believed the cause to be. He mentioned people from the zone belongs to different political
parties, so they see the activities of the Community Center as meetings to promote the current
leading party and acts related to it; at this point Rocio complemented him explaining us that she
was in charge of publicity (publicity for her consists on pieces of paper pasted in the walls of the
mini stores surrounding the zone). The following talk was merely trash and repetitive, so there`s no
need to go any further with it. By this point we had one fulminant question running in our minds: If
they know everyone in the zone, why don´t they focus the Center´s activities according to the age,
needs, gender and interests of the people?
III. Facing the “problem”
We decided by our own to applicate some of the surveys we printed for the activity with the
neighbors of the “Community Center Francisco I. Madero”. We wanted them to answer them
anonymously, but by the time we located our first subject, he preferred us to write the answers for
him. So from that moment, the methodology for us follow was to just ask and write the answers by
ourselves. We translated the results in the following page; the data was introduced in an Excel Sheet
that allows us to manage the data better for its understanding.

5. Survey results
People reached 30
Ages categories Number of persons
5 to 15 5
16 to 24 3
25 to 30 4
31 to 40 8
40 + 10
We have a different variety of answers, so we filtrated those who had the most entries and made the following chart.
Problem Quantity
Bad-shape luminaries 6
Better sports areas 3
Potholes 11
Cleaning 4
Lack of variety of
activities 2
Satisfaction Level
10 1
7 to 9 24
5 to 6 5
4 - 0
5 to 15
17%
16 to 24
10%
25 to 30
13%31 to 40
27%
40 +
33%
Number of persons
5 to 15
16 to 24
25 to 30
31 to 40
40 +
6
3
11
4
2
Bad-shape luminairies
Better sports areas
PotholesCleaning
Lack of variety of
activities
Quantity
0
5
10
15
20
25
10 7 TO 9 5 TO 6 4 -
1
24
5
0
Level

6. IV. Our proposal
After we saw the results of our surveys, we were amazed how well the people felt in their
community, because we went looking at first for major problems as insecurities or lack of
government attendance. But the neighbor’s first impression was that their community presented
minor problems, like the ones that allow the community look better, but maybe there aren’t
priorities or urgent needs.
We could see that as Mr. Juan de Dios told us, one of the principles needs they detected was the
bad-shape luminaries. But the one that emerged as the biggest problem of the community were the
potholes that the community presented in most of the streets. So the decision was to focus mainly
on this two problems.
For the potholes, we think that the best way to solve the problems the
pavement presented were because the bad application of the asphalt. So
maybe the first step would be to remove the actual asphalt, make a clean of
the soil there, and after that star the carpeting with the asphalt. The way to
achieve a pothole-free street, would be to maintain the same pressure in the
path with a machine that could allow street-wide reach for a constant
application.
For the luminaires we could heard that the mainly factors this luminaries
star to fail, is because the rain factors. So maybe the main malfunctions presented were that the
electrical components were damaged by the water leaking. As
we were researching, this modern lamps are composed by led
panels, that benefits with a brighter light. This could also help
to keep a better control of the street, making possible to
observe clearly during the night. This luminaries are in
majority made by high impact durable ABS plastic that could
support climatologic damages as hail, lightning, rain, etc.
Also the cost of repairs aren´t that high due to 2 main factors,
the durability of the frame and the rate of fail. So it could be
the best way to face their problems.

7. V. Conclusions
What we learned in these project is that we needed to search for the community center located in
Francisco I Madero, we need to call to government so we can redirect to the number of the
headquarters of the community centers then take some instructions to get in to the right colony.
Then when we tried to arrive to that colony we decided to take a taxi and the guy of the taxi doesn’t
knew very good where the place is. When we arrived we talked with the uncharged of the
community center and she was very kind. Also we learned how to approach to people, that there
are many different ways in how to talk to the people so the message that we wanted to deliver
would be understand by the receptor, by the other hand we noticed that not every person was
heard opened to share their opinion. To conclude these project helped us to gain experience in the
treat with persons that in one future we could use it when we are in our jobs, also the way to talk
to other persons so the information that we want to transmit arrive correctly and to not depend in
other persons to achieve or arrive to our destinations and goals.