Impact Stories
Making change happen across Australia and Asia Pacific.
Congratulations to the 2023 EWB Challenge Showcase award winners
Each year, the EWB Challenge Showcase brings together top university student teams from across Australia and New Zealand, EWB staff, our community partner representatives, and industry. Students present the most innovative, community-centred design ideas developed in response to the EWB Challenge Design Brief, and all event participants celebrate a year of learning, focused work, and collaboration. This year’s EWB Challenge Showcase saw students, academics, judges, and EWB staff from across Australia, New Zealand and Cambodia travel to James Cook University’s Nguma-bada campus in far north Queensland to battle it out for the top spot.
Congratulations to the 2023 EWB Challenge Showcase award winners
Each year, the EWB Challenge Showcase brings together top university student teams from across Australia and New Zealand, EWB staff, our community partner representatives, and industry. Students present the most innovative, community-centred design ideas developed in response to the EWB Challenge Design Brief, and all event participants celebrate a year of learning, focused work, and collaboration. This year’s EWB Challenge Showcase saw students, academics, judges, and EWB staff from across Australia, New Zealand and Cambodia travel to James Cook University’s Nguma-bada campus in far north Queensland to battle it out for the top spot.
Engineer by profession, engineer in spirit
Picture this; you’re an undergraduate university student working on your first introductory engineering assignment where you are required to draw a bridge for a remote village in Cambodia. Or you are a Master’s student designing a HVAC system for households in Nepal, with variable temperature, pressure, and elevation levels to consider. University teaches you the basics – the software, the calculations, and how to write the report at the end – but how can you be sure that it’s fit for purpose in those locations? Do you really need to understand the socio-technical and cultural aspects of building something for a community you might never visit?
Scoping for best-practice
Much has been written about the EWB Challenge—our ground-breaking, first-year University program, now in its 13th year. Embedded into the curriculum of 28 Australian and New Zealand Universities (and adopted by EWB organisations around the world), the EWB Challenge...
ATEC* about to roll out first PAYGO-tech for biodigesters and expand across Asia
ATEC* Biodigesters (ATEC), an Australian Social Enterprise, has raised US$1,600,000 in a Series-B equity round to rollout the world’s first PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) model for biodigesters as well as to expand its operations from Cambodia to Bangladesh. The investment was...
Teach a girl to fish
Erin and the MECCA-M Power grant: Chapter One. On the eve of setting off on my trip to the Torres Strait as part of my undertaking for the MECCA-M Power grant, I’ve been reflecting on how this project is a fantastic synergy of my personal journey. A very strong theme...
Water shortage solution for Cambodian families
4 EWB Field Professional volunteers placed with RWC since 2015 Underground rainwater tank pilot tested in 10 households (57 individuals total) Over 20 RWC staff and interns capacity strengthened Climate change has brought about significant drought and rain-scarcity...
Workshopping the new national guiding principles for sanitation in Cambodia
A key focus of our recent work in Cambodia has been the development of National Guiding Principles on Sanitation in Challenging Environments for Rural Households, a highly consultative process involving government (national and provincial), NGOs, UNICEF, WHO,...
Announcing our 2020 EWB Challenge community partner
Each year, the EWB Challenge works alongside a community partner to design a brief that can directly address the challenges of a specific community. For many years we’ve focused this work on our overseas partnerships, with past Challenges exploring solutions for...
Link Research Symposium 2019
On Monday 2nd December RMIT kindly hosted our annual Link Research Symposium. The Symposium is the closing event of the year where students engaged in the research program present their findings to staff, peers and members of the engineering education community. It...
How demonstration toilets inform the socialisation of Vanuatu’s sanitation and hygiene guidelines
On Vanuatu’s 85 islands, many people live in challenging sanitation environments, including areas that are drought or flood-prone, coastal, on hard rock, with high groundwater or in difficult social contexts. Sanitation issues in Vanuatu are exacerbated by natural...