Blog
Stories from EWB Australia
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...
Navigating the tides: Saibai Island’s battle against climate change
In 2024, the First Nations context for the EWB Challenge will be delivered in partnership with Torres Strait Island Regional Council. Torres Strait Island Regional Council is Australia's most northerly municipality, representing 15 unique island communities, spread...
The Handi-Plough tool has one simple job: to empower Cambodian women farmers
In Cambodia, nearly 80% of people live rurally and many operate small farms to feed their families and generate income. These agricultural holdings are often run, and worked, by women who face unique challenges in the field. EWB engineers Mengheang Hak, Mitch Horrocks...
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...
Enabling Gender Mainstreaming Through Policy and Programming
In October 2020, EWB’s Board Of Directors demonstrated the organisation's increased commitment to diversity and gender equality, by announcing a specific commitment to board quotas. Currently, five of the eleven board members are women, however, over the next three...
Spring water successes in Timor-Leste
Protecting spring water is critical to ensure the safe - and sustainable - supply of water in many rural communities of Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste is a beautiful but mountainous country, terrain which makes accessing water through borehole wells impractical. As a...
Engineering a decade of action
On World Engineering for Sustainable Development Day (4th March 2021) UNESCO released their second Engineering for Sustainable Development report. Both the report and the day acknowledge the critical role engineers can and must play if we’re to achieve the United...
EWB responds to Timor-Leste floods
Last weekend, and in the midst of a COVID-19 lockdown, heavy rain caused widespread flood damage throughout Timor-Leste. Over 11,000 people have been displaced from their homes, and 30% of Dili’s residents are currently unable to access water, due to severely damaged...
Announcing the EWB Influencer Fellowship recipients for 2021
The EWB Influencer Fellowship is a transformative mentorship program that individually supports students who have already displayed a particular drive and commitment to using their skills to address inequality, sustainability and peace. Now in its second year, five...
Supporting partners through pandemics: Vanuatu
In Vanuatu, the pandemic has meant we have had to alter how our Australia Volunteer Field Professionals support our work remotely, with a shift to strengthening the capacity of our local partners to design appropriate and sustainable technology solutions. EWB’s...
Water rehab for Mekong villages
The Mekong River is the lifeblood of Southeast Asia. As one of the longest rivers in the world, it flows through six countries - including Cambodia, where it is home to thousands of people who live in villages not far from its banks. These communities access the...
Jumbo Jars ready for when the heavens open
Half of Cambodia’s rural population - more than six million people - lack access to clean water. It’s a combination of two main issues. One is climate change, which has brought about significant drought. The other is an unreliable supply of clean water, due to unsafe...
Seeking solutions to acceptance of female engineers in Timor-Leste
A new report aims to highlight the challenges and explore solutions to the barriers that female engineers face in Timor-Leste – of which there are many. Feto Enginhera was formed in 2014 to support the technical and engineering careers of women in Timor-Leste. Less...
In the workshop with FREO2
EWB established a partnership with FREO2 in June this year, aiming to further develop and scale technology for children and newborns who catch pneumonia or suffer acute breathing troubles - a key cause of death in developing countries. Over the past six months, EWB's...
The 2020 Danny Awards
Each year the Danny Awards, named after EWB founder Danny Almagor, recognises those in our volunteer network who have made an outstanding contribution to EWB’s mission. The 2020 awards were held online on Thursday December 17 2020. Here are the winners...Leader &...
Mobilising the Accessible Moto v2.0
Over the past year as EWB Australia initiated its new mobilisation program which matches volunteers with specific real-world projects to support EWB’s work. To launch the program, we identified three distinct streams: Open Challenges - such as the BirthWatch project...
BirthWatch – from open challenge to mobilised design
Open Challenges are a mechanism that forms part of EWB Australia’s new Mobilisation program. An Open Challenge focuses on a discrete part of a real-life engineering problem, allowing our network to engage in crowd-sourced ideation, creativity and innovation. The...
The EWB Challenge Showcase 2020 – it’s a wrap!
The EWB Challenge Showcase for 2020 has wrapped up three days of online hosted pitches, presentations and webinars, celebrating the hard work of over 10,000 university students. Our partner for this year, the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CfAT), has been inspired by student ideas and insights, some of which may influence our technology development work into 2021, which we will be looking at together soon. All student project reports, summaries and pitches from the EWB Challenge are shared with CfAT – and the EWB team will be looking at them with CfAT to explore what’s next.
Vanuatu: World First Disposable Nappy Ban
Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) is working with local organisation, Mama’s Laef and Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health to implement Vanuatu’s world first disposable nappy ban. Vanuatu is setting out to become the first nation to ban disposable nappies. With an estimated 20,000 babies and toddlers on Vanuatu’s 65 islands, disposable nappies are the single largest contributing item to waste in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila. And their disposal in rural and remote areas is handled in ways that sometimes are as potentially damaging to a communities’ health as open defecation. Which is where EWB’s Tumble Drum Project comes in. A prototype will be rolled out in 2021 in order to test the design, iterate, and ultimately scale the non-electric technology.
EWB organisations worldwide unite in call for professional engineering competencies reform
With just ten years to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals, international branches of Engineers Without Borders, including Engineers Without Borders Australia, are uniting to call for a professional engineering competencies reform. The organisations are united...
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