Blog
Stories from EWB Australia
Announcing our 2025 EWB Challenge community partner – WaterAid Australia
Since 2009, Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB Australia) has worked alongside communities in Timor-Leste to develop sustainable solutions to the unique social, economic, and environmental challenges they face. Through long-term partnerships and human-centred...
Lessons from Timor-Leste: what the EWB Design Summit taught me about engineering
Jessica is based in Sydney, in her second year studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney. With an interest in human-centered design and an eagerness to learn more about Timorese culture and history, Jessica joined our Humanitarian Design...
Building on pilot success: Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program returns to Far North Queensland
After a successful pilot last year, Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB)’s Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program has returned to Lama Lama Country in Far North Queensland, with the goal of sparking a curiosity in engineering among First Nations students. The...
Meet EWB volunteer, Harshana!
Harshana, Civil and Water Engineer Volunteering with the EWB Australia in Vanuatu team Harshana is part of EWB's volunteer crew in Vanuatu, and is just one of the hundreds of volunteers across the EWB volunteer network! Volunteers dedicate time and effort to ensure...
Futur-neered: a Youth Outreach milestone
Caption: Youth Outreach volunteers convene at the Futur-neers Forum in Melbourne (April 2022). A year of targeted investment in EWB’s volunteer-driven Youth Outreach program placed a strong focus on impact evaluation and shaping the “next era” of outreach at EWB. The...
Volunteering for skills and to contribute to ‘my beloved country’
We celebrate the amazing contribution of our volunteers every day! But United Nations International Volunteer Day, on December 5th each year, is a time to give an immense thanks! Volunteers are so important to EWB's work. They dedicate time and effort to ensure the...
Clean, safe water needed for remote Indigenous communities
Access to safe and reliable water is a basic human right, and essential for health and quality of life. Yet not all remote First Nations communities can access it. The Engineers Without Borders Australia Engineering on Country (EoC) Water Program aims to ensure First...
Sanitation solutions for hard ground environments in Cambodia
Despite significant progress over the years to increase access to rural sanitation services, Cambodia continues to report the highest rate of open defecation in the region. In 2011, to address the many health and environmental issues associated with open defecation,...
Announcing our 2023 EWB Challenge community partner
Photo caption: Technology Development Specialist Mariny Chheang and Program Support Officer Chanrika Keo leading a female focus group with Pu Ngaol village members. Each year, over 10,000 first-year university students across Australia and New Zealand participate in...
Meet our Futur-neers: Emily Chung
Feature image: Emily renovating women’s crisis accommodation with Habitat for Humanity as a volunteer in 2018. “I’m quite motivated by doing things other people don’t. Being one of the only female students in my engineering classes didn’t bother me. I proved that I...
Meet our Futur-neers: Elise McCaul
Image: UNSW Chapter Co-President, Elise McCaul, presenting a session about her experience delivering Youth Outreach at the 2022 Futur-neers Forum. As Elise kicked off her first year studying a Bachelor of Civil Engineering at The University of New South Wales, it...
The challenge that blew his mind: Tim Kuiper
As a newly-minted undergrad, Tim Kuiper took a seat in his first class of mechanical engineering at Deakin University. Little did he know, it was a unit that was about to blow his mind. It was 2007. Lizzie Brown, EWB’s Education Officer at the time (who later became...
Embedding Indigenous perspectives at Griffith University
The academic team at Griffith University has been working to authentically embed Indigenous perspectives into their engineering and design curriculum. This begins in a student's first year at Griffith University with the EWB Challenge program, which introduces...
Using human-centred design tools in community
Feature image: EWB Technology Development Lead Mitch Horrocks at a participatory design workshop in Darlau, Timor-Leste in May 2022. Over 3,500 people have directly benefited from new, appropriate technology that EWB has been involved in implementing in Cambodia,...
EWB Australia responds to the floods in northern NSW
Feature image: Volunteer Field Lead Engineer and EWB Australia Board Member, Gavin Blakey, HHUG director Ella Rose Goninan, and volunteer engineer Dominic (Cav) Cavanough outside “The Ark”, HHUG's Op Shop in Mullumbimby which provides free clothing and household goods...
New research give critical insights into disposal of nappy waste in the Pacific
Featured image: Erakor Community Facilitator A new research report on nappy use in the Pacific has been released which provides critical insights into addressing the estimated 815 million single-use nappies used and disposed of in the Pacific region each year. EWB...
Stellar EWB involvement leads to donation
One day in 2018, while spending part of her gap year volunteering as a teacher in Cambodia, Charli Fell’s career aspirations changed completely. Charli had always wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. She thought the best way to do so would be to become...
Meet our Futur-neers: David Sea
Pictured: David on-site in NSW in his role as an undergraduate process engineer with Metso Outotec in 2022. Growing up in Cambodia, David Sea never imagined he would one day be teaching children in rural Australia how to build floating houses like those on the Tonle...
Futur-neers Forum 2022 – the wrap
The Futur-neers Forum was a welcome and long overdue in-person reconnection of EWB’s Chapter network after a two-year, lockdown-riddled hiatus. Over 50 EWB staff and Chapter volunteers - representing 16 of the 19 active EWB Chapters dotted right across Australia -...
Meet our Futur-neers: Chelsea Hayward
Feature image: Chelsea picking coffee beans in Railaco, Timor Leste during her time volunteering as a mentor on a Humanitarian Design Summit trip in July 2018. Nurse. Farmer. Social worker. Athlete. Biomedical scientist. These were just some of the many careers that...
Creating opportunity for migrant and refugee engineers
The professional qualifications of migrants and refugees arriving in Australia are often buried by the obstacles that come with settling in a new country. EWB’s NSW Chapter and Metro Assist are creating opportunities to address these challenges. English as a foreign...
New social enterprise brings electric cooking to schools and institutions in Cambodia
EWB Australia is partnering with FuturEcook - a social enterprise that improves health, education and the environment with smart electric cooking for schools and other institutions in Cambodia. Donate to our joint fundraising campaign so we can make start! Across the...
Vertical gardens addressing space, water and food security issues in Vanuatu
Erratic rainfall, small spaces and fluctuation in market costs are creating food security issues for vulnerable communities in Vanuatu. A new project is developing solutions for 1000 people to create their own daily food supply and carve out livelihoods, with the...
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