Impact Stories
Making change happen across Australia and Asia Pacific.
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...
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...
That’s a wrap for the 2024 EWB Challenge Showcase!
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.
Meet our Futur-neers: Eve Visser
As a high school student, Eve Visser was told by a career advisor that she shouldn’t consider university. However, Eve was determined not to let this dissuade her. She took it as added motivation, going on to receive a scholarship to study at the Australian National University (ANU). Currently in her third year studying Engineering and Science with a major in Climate Science, Eve is passionate about sharing her experiences and knowledge with prospective students. This interest in outreach inspired her to start volunteering with EWB’s ACT Chapter, running workshops to encourage students to pursue a path in engineering.
Designing Indigenous-led engineering pathways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been practising engineering and sustainably managing Country for over 70,000 years. But in the engineering sector, the number of Indigenous engineers employed in Australia remains low. How can we attract this critical...
Inspiring the next generation of technology stewards with Bentley Systems
An annual STEM outreach event that explores and showcases the opportunities possible in STEM careers brought 60 high-school students from three schools across Victoria together for a series of design challenges in November, 2022. The outreach program known as the Innovation Challenge has been run in Victoria by the EWB Australia University of Melbourne Chapter since 2019. The program engages Year 9 and 10 students, primarily from backgrounds under-represented in STEM, in an in-depth, hands-on socio-technical design challenge.
Northern Rivers floods engineering response paves way for future emergency support
A year after the floods that devastated communities in the Northern Rivers region, Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) and local community partner Holding Hands Under Ground (HHUG) have been coordinating volunteers to respond to community needs. In doing so, EWB has been piloting a recovery response model that can be mobilised across other regions during future climate disasters, to support low-income and marginalised communities.
Regioneering on the road again
From Busselton on the southwest edge of Australia to the Torres Strait Islands in the far north, EWB Australia’s Regioneering program sprung well and truly back into action in 2022.Through week-long road trips, Regioneering inspires students in regional and remote areas, a cohort that often misses out on STEM outreach initiatives, to engage with STEM and consider the possibilities of a career in engineering. For many EWB Australia Chapters, these trips have been on hold over the past few years due to pandemic-related restrictions. With road trips and incursions possible again across the country, EWB Australia’s Regioneers have enthusiastically returned.
Meet our Futur-neers: Erin Hughes
Growing up on a boat in the Torres Strait until she was 14, water was an integral part of Erin Hughes’ childhood. Today, it’s the focus of her work as an engineer. After completing a Chemical Engineering degree at the University of Queensland, Erin is now a Surface Water Engineer at Hydrology and Risk Consulting in Victoria. She works in flood engineering and hydrology, working with emergency services to manage flood risks and providing technical input to dam operators across Australia.
Q&A from ‘What every engineer must do to create solutions that stick’ webinar
Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar, What every engineer must do to create solutions that stick. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! It was a wonderful discussion and we thank you for your insightful questions and feedback. In case you missed it, you...
Meet our Futur-neers: Hannah Jury
It’s not all calculations and writing reports when you’re an engineer. Sometimes you’re abseiling from some of the tallest buildings in Melbourne’s CBD. Or at least that’s what a ‘day in the office’ can look like for façade engineer, Hannah Jury.