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.
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...
The PhD unpacking intersecting complexities in WASH
A soon-to-be-published PhD thesis takes learnings from EWB’s Sanitation in Challenging Environment program to investigate the interlocking and compounding complexities that create inequalities in water and sanitation access for communities in challenging contexts.
Volunteering for ‘real-world work experience’
Volunteers are so important to EWB’s work. They dedicate time and effort to ensure the inclusion of those often left behind, drive climate action and advance the Sustainable Development Goals. We have volunteers whom support our work in Australia, and volunteers that work with our teams in-country. Kit Kann is one of them.
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.
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...
Futur-neered: a Youth Outreach milestone
Caption: Youth Outreach volunteers convene at the Futur-neers Forum in Melbourne (April 2022). A year of targeted investment in EWB’s volunteer-driven Youth Outreach program placed a strong focus on impact evaluation and shaping the “next era” of outreach at EWB. The...
Volunteering for skills and to contribute to ‘my beloved country’
We celebrate the amazing contribution of our volunteers every day! But United Nations International Volunteer Day, on December 5th each year, is a time to give an immense thanks! Volunteers are so important to EWB's work. They dedicate time and effort to ensure the...
Clean, safe water needed for remote Indigenous communities
Access to safe and reliable water is a basic human right, and essential for health and quality of life. Yet not all remote First Nations communities can access it. The Engineers Without Borders Australia Engineering on Country (EoC) Water Program aims to ensure First...
Sanitation solutions for hard ground environments in Cambodia
Despite significant progress over the years to increase access to rural sanitation services, Cambodia continues to report the highest rate of open defecation in the region. In 2011, to address the many health and environmental issues associated with open defecation,...