Blog
Stories from EWB Australia
A toilet that works underwater? Flood-affected sanitation in rural Cambodia
We’re living in the golden age of toilet design. It sounds like a weird thing to say but the idea of an inside toilet that immediately flushes waste away through a series of underground pipes is the kind of thing that would blow the minds of people living just 100...
Volunteer adventures in Vanuatu: Sadia’s life-changing year abroad
Feature image: Sadia Abdullah and her team at the Vanuatu Department of Water Resources during her year abroad as an EWB Australian Volunteers Program Field Professional. When Sadia Abdullah arrived in Vanuatu, the first thing she noticed was the heat and the...
Global travels and local impact – Bea Duffield’s volunteering journey
Bea Duffield isn’t an engineer, but her experience spans almost everything else. From her academic background in scientific research to her career across both private enterprise and government sector, she has worked in a range of diverse fields including resource...
Stories from the field – Kasey Williams
Most high school students walk away from university open days with a bunch of flyers, drink bottles and a show bag from the snow club. Kasey Williams certainly did too, but she also gained valuable insight into the flourishing world of humanitarian engineering. Kasey...
Stories from the field – Vikrant Gorasia
One day on his daily commute to primary school, they took a detour. Roadworks lead the school bus through Kibera, a neighbourhood that is home to Kenya’s largest slum. Outside the bus window, sewage was used as a domestic water source and layers of smoke formed a...
We work in the regions most acutely threatened by climate change
We work in the regions most acutely threatened by climate change. Against a backdrop of unprecedented global heatwaves, wildfires, retreating ice, record sea level rises and extreme cyclones, we created our 2030 strategy. In it, the impacts of climate change are...
Reflecting on the first semester of EWB’s Influencer Fellowship
At the start of 2021, five students who displayed exceptional drive and commitment to using their skills to address inequality, sustainability and peace were announced as EWB’s 2021 Influencer Fellows. The EWB Influencer Fellowship is a program to create a network of...
Pathways to possibility for First Nations students
Inspiring Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children to explore a future in engineering is a key tenet of EWB’s “Reimagining Pathways” program. As part of the first phase of this program, the Aboriginal Education Consulting Group (AECG) invited EWB to support...
Futur-neer outreach program awarded WISE Grant
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Australia’s, “Futur-neer” program has secured a major grant from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources as part of the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship (WiSE) program. The Futur-neer program...
Developing a sanitation solution to Vanuatu’s Emten Lagoon pollution
Emten Lagoon is a picturesque and important part of Vanuatu’s Efate Island, with the several communities that reside nearby relying on it for livelihood and lifestyle. But locals have had growing concerns about the lagoon’s pollution levels, in part due to sewage...
Breaking engineering stereotypes in the Torres Strait
In 2019 Erin Hughes received a grant from the MECCA M-Power program to undertake research into the educational impact of Regioneering workshops in the Torres Strait. A sneak peak at the preliminary findings suggests the workshops are achieving their aims, breaking...
Regioneering takes head, heart, and action
By Lachlan Fraser Before the volunteers from EWB’s 2019 Regioneering program flew to the Torres Strait, the students involved in the upcoming workshops were asked to draw a picture of an engineer. One young girl drew a male stick figure next to a car - no surprise!...
Taylah Griffin on self reflection, collective action and courage as keys to achieving reconciliation
My name is Taylah Griffin, Gangalu mob, I am a Flight Test Engineer (FTE) at Boeing Defence Australia (BDA). I completed my Honours degree in Electrical and Aerospace Engineering from QUT in 2018, and in doing so, became the first Indigenous Australian to graduate...
Visioning Reconciliation: Reconciliation, engineering and you
When people say what can I do, I’m just an individual, Arabella Douglas likes to remind them that they’re made of stars. As you might guess, Arabella is passionate about how individuals can come together to create real change. That’s why her involvement in EWB’s...
National Volunteer Week 2021 Shout Out
It would be impossible to run all the life-changing projects at EWB without the tireless and dedicated work of our amazing volunteers. This National Volunteer Week (May 17-23 2021) we want to say a massive THANK YOU to these people, who make our work possible! We...
Turning a passion for social justice into an engineering career – Adele van der Winden’s EWB Story
One day, nearing the end of high school, Adele van der Winden thought to herself: if only there was a Doctors Without Borders, but for people who like maths and physics. Not long after, she heard about Engineers Without Borders. A spark was lit! Adele’s dedication to...
ANU Breaking New Ground In Humanitarian Engineering Education
It was a handwritten note, placed underneath the door of his office. “I am incredibly passionate about, and dedicated towards becoming, a humanitarian engineer!” it said. That was Orientation Week, 2019. It was one of those precious moments that made Australian...
Embedding the SDGs into corporate responsibility initiatives
EWB Australia partners with organisations that align with us in their commitment to positively contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. One of these is Epiroc, a leading productivity partner for the mining, infrastructure and natural resources industries....
Wenqian’s way: From inquisitive kid to challenging the status quo
Picture yourself as a kid, watching your parents clean the house. If you’re like most people, you couldn’t think of anything more uninspiring. If you’re like Wenqian Gan, this is exactly what inspires a career. Growing up, Wenqian would watch her parents do chores...
Good will hacking – monitoring the moto
Patrick carries around five second-hand phones. On the weekends, he straps them onto the dashboard of his car and takes them for a drive through Sydney’s streets. Patrick’s not a covert criminal running some kind of dodgy operation. He’s conducting important work on a...
Aligning personal values with an engineering career
When most children get tired of their toys, they’re usually thrown away or donated to the local charity shop. As a young kid growing up in Adelaide, Stephanie May’s mum encouraged her to give away her toys to other children, to bring them some joy. Stephanie was also...
Developing emergency guidelines for Vanuatu
In Vanuatu, the world’s most disaster-prone country, there is not yet an approved approach or plan to guide a sanitation and hygiene response after an emergency. The confluence of Cyclone Harold and a global pandemic in March 2020 saw the significant impact on Vanuatu...
Eliminating disposable nappy waste across the Pacific Islands
Building on initiatives underway in Vanuatu that are exploring solutions to disposable nappy waste - the single largest contributing item to waste in Vanuatu’s capital - EWB is now working on a project to assess solutions to this challenge in 15 countries across the...
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