Impact Stories
Making change happen across Australia and Asia Pacific.
This graduate program puts women engineers in the field and brings ‘feto’ to the front
In Timor-Leste, water is a woman’s problem. In rural and regional areas, water generally isn’t delivered into homes – women and children manually fetch water from the natural springs and carry the household’s water supply back home every morning. It’s heavy work and can take them quite far afield in an often rocky, mountainous region.
Although water is a woman’s responsibility, and the burden of poor water infrastructure becomes a woman’s problem, there aren’t many women engineers working in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.
Engineering continues to be a male-dominated industry, especially in a country like Timor-Leste, where traditional gender roles are still influential in dictating what people do for work. But a new program delivered by the Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) team in Timor-Leste seeks to change that.
This graduate program puts women engineers in the field and brings ‘feto’ to the front
In Timor-Leste, water is a woman’s problem. In rural and regional areas, water generally isn’t delivered into homes – women and children manually fetch water from the natural springs and carry the household’s water supply back home every morning. It’s heavy work and can take them quite far afield in an often rocky, mountainous region.
Although water is a woman’s responsibility, and the burden of poor water infrastructure becomes a woman’s problem, there aren’t many women engineers working in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.
Engineering continues to be a male-dominated industry, especially in a country like Timor-Leste, where traditional gender roles are still influential in dictating what people do for work. But a new program delivered by the Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) team in Timor-Leste seeks to change that.
Volunteer adventures in Vanuatu: Sadia’s life-changing year abroad
When Sadia Abdullah arrived in Vanuatu, the first thing she noticed was the heat and the humidity. The second was how friendly everyone was, and the strong sense of community.
Sadia flew into Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, in August 2022. Months earlier, she was at home in Sydney under tight COVID restrictions and eager to go anywhere outside her living room. Now, just a three-hour flight from Sydney, she was in beautiful Vanuatu, a country she knew almost nothing about a few months prior — just “that it was a dot in the Pacific”. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands with a population of around 300,000 people, located east of Australia on a similar latitude to Cairns.
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...