Engineers Australia have themed 2012 the Year of Regional Engineering. This is a fantastic opportunity for the EWB community to collaborate with a range of community partners in rural Victoria. According to Engineers Australia, two of their strategies for the year are: to increase awareness of engineering opportunities in regional areas; and to generate an understanding of the value of the regional engineering team. EWB inherently has similar goals to this.
As a community development organisation, EWB is well placed to connect, empower and educate communities to humanitarian engineering opportunities and increase awareness of issues in appropriate technology, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Our School Outreach Program is well established across metropolitan Melbourne. We have an ongoing partnership with Akorn Education to deliver daily workshops to secondary school students with case studies in humanitarian engineering and in a wide diversity of places such as: Yorta Yorta country in northern Victoria; Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia; and Habitat for Humanity in Vietnam. One of our goals in 2012 is to extend this program to schools in Ballarat, Mildura and Wangaratta.
Furthermore, our Knowledge Hubs and Local Partnership teams are ramping up again and are starting to lock in dates for initiatives for the year. At our team retreat down in Angelsea in mid January, we developed some initiatives around appropriate technology workshops, local projects, and member engagement. We also had so much fun as well and the beach was blue bliss.
Our focus throughout the year will be to induct as many of you as possible into EWB. We want to ensure that the majority of our community are aware of the things that EWB is, and is not, engaged with. Keep an eye out for our Speed Date Nights and EWB Induction Sessions.
Check us out on Facebook, Twitter (@ewbvic), send us an email (vic.chapter@ewb.org.au) or just keep an eye on us via our website throughout the year. We are pumped about 2012 and we would love it if you could join us on the journey and dedicate some of your time to volunteer in humanitarian engineering.
EWB Victoria works in partnership with developing communities both within Australia and overseas, assisting them to gain access to the knowledge, resources and appropriate technologies they need to improve their livelihoods. This Blogspot is issued monthly and focuses on EWB's Victoria Region Team.
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