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.
Building on pilot success: Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program returns to Far North Queensland
After a successful pilot last year, Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB)’s Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program has returned to Lama Lama Country in Far North Queensland, with the goal of sparking a curiosity in engineering among First Nations students. The...
Announcing our 2023 EWB Challenge community partner
Photo caption: Technology Development Specialist Mariny Chheang and Program Support Officer Chanrika Keo leading a female focus group with Pu Ngaol village members. Each year, over 10,000 first-year university students across Australia and New Zealand participate in...
Meet our Futur-neers: Emily Chung
Feature image: Emily renovating women’s crisis accommodation with Habitat for Humanity as a volunteer in 2018. “I’m quite motivated by doing things other people don’t. Being one of the only female students in my engineering classes didn’t bother me. I proved that I...
Meet our Futur-neers: Elise McCaul
Image: UNSW Chapter Co-President, Elise McCaul, presenting a session about her experience delivering Youth Outreach at the 2022 Futur-neers Forum. As Elise kicked off her first year studying a Bachelor of Civil Engineering at The University of New South Wales, it...
The challenge that blew his mind: Tim Kuiper
As a newly-minted undergrad, Tim Kuiper took a seat in his first class of mechanical engineering at Deakin University. Little did he know, it was a unit that was about to blow his mind. It was 2007. Lizzie Brown, EWB’s Education Officer at the time (who later became...
Embedding Indigenous perspectives at Griffith University
The academic team at Griffith University has been working to authentically embed Indigenous perspectives into their engineering and design curriculum. This begins in a student's first year at Griffith University with the EWB Challenge program, which introduces...
Using human-centred design tools in community
Feature image: EWB Technology Development Lead Mitch Horrocks at a participatory design workshop in Darlau, Timor-Leste in May 2022. Over 3,500 people have directly benefited from new, appropriate technology that EWB has been involved in implementing in Cambodia,...
EWB Australia responds to the floods in northern NSW
Feature image: Volunteer Field Lead Engineer and EWB Australia Board Member, Gavin Blakey, HHUG director Ella Rose Goninan, and volunteer engineer Dominic (Cav) Cavanough outside “The Ark”, HHUG's Op Shop in Mullumbimby which provides free clothing and household goods...
New research give critical insights into disposal of nappy waste in the Pacific
Featured image: Erakor Community Facilitator A new research report on nappy use in the Pacific has been released which provides critical insights into addressing the estimated 815 million single-use nappies used and disposed of in the Pacific region each year. EWB...