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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

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

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.

Meeting on Yirrganydji Country for the EWB Challenge Showcase

Meeting on Yirrganydji Country for the EWB Challenge Showcase

Hosted by event sponsors TNQ Drought Hub and The Cairns Institute at James Cook University’s Nguma-bada campus, the 15th EWB Challenge Showcase heralded the return to in-person showcases since the start of the pandemic. Students, academics, judges, and EWB staff from around Australia were eager to travel to Yirrganydji Country in far north Queensland, which was the site of the project brief for this year’s EWB Challenge.

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Meet EWB volunteer, Harshana!

Meet EWB volunteer, Harshana!

Harshana, Civil and Water Engineer Volunteering with the EWB Australia in Vanuatu team Harshana is part of EWB's volunteer crew in Vanuatu, and is just one of the hundreds of volunteers across the EWB volunteer network! Volunteers dedicate time and effort to ensure...

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