Engineers Without Borders Break Down Barriers at Summer Retreat

Hello out there recent high school graduates! Congratulations and welcome to the world after high school!

One of the cool things about university is all the opportunities that come your way. If you thought you had access to many cool clubs, teams and organizations in high school, wait until you get to Mac!

Daniela (bottom left) and her fellow EWBers at the end of their retreat.

Since I started at Mac, I have been involved in the organization Engineers Without Borders (EWB). It’s a national organization with chapters in universities, companies and cities across the country. Some of the work we do in Canada is focused on engaging high school students to think about the impact they have on the world, promoting fair trade, influencing engineering curriculum, and lobbying the government concerning development issues.

With so many ventures and members across the country, summer provides us EWBers with an opportunity to get together and talk about the work different chapters are doing and plan for the coming school year. During the Canada Day long weekend, the Ontario and Atlantic chapters got together in Paris, Ontario and had three days of intense discussion and planning. It’s great to unplug and get thinking with loads of flip chart paper, markers and post-its!

In this session, groups were having a discussion around different 
types of aid: market-based, needs-based and rights-based. 

One of my favourite sessions was the Agricultural Extension FarmVillage activity, where participants learn about some of the challenges that farmers face in rural Ghana, Africa. When I was a Junior Fellow (short-term volunteer) in Ghana with EWB, I was part of the Agricultural Extension team, so this session gave me a chance to share a bit of my experience. (Check out the blog, Let's Go Black Stars!, I wrote while I was in Ghana in 2011.)

Something that is really awesome about EWB is that the co-founder & CEO, George Roter, comes out to these retreats and participates with us! We even have a tradition called "Q&A", where we all gather together and can ask him whatever questions we have about the organization. As students, we play a fundamental role in what EWB does. It’s pretty cool!

If you want to learn more about EWB, shoot me a comment or look me up when you get here in September! We’ll be at Clubs Fest and Eng Fest, events where all campus and engineering clubs have sign-up booths.

Later days,
Daniela

Engaging Education at the Global Engineering Conference

Hello all those in cyber space! I hope you are enjoying March so far!

One of the cool things about university is the plethora of opportunities that present themselves. The biggest piece of advice I got in first year was “get involved”. I bet many of you have heard that in high school too. Experience is very important for engineers, and all students for that matter. In the working world, engineers in particular wear many different hats and have to fill many different roles. From efficiency calculations, to financial reporting, to presentations, we are expected to be adaptable. There is a new concept for this type of engineer: the Global Engineer.


On March 2, the Engineers Without Borders chapter at McMaster hosted a Global Engineering conference around re-framing your education. We brought in speakers and facilitators from Hamilton to Kingston, to give students an opportunity to see how approaching problems from different perspectives and how engineering fits into things outside the technical realm. Engineering problems benefit from an understanding of business, law, history – you name it!

Students from McMaster, as well as some from the University of Waterloo, University of Windsor and the University of Toronto, participated in learning sessions that provided ideas and tools around engaging their education through experiences. There was also a panel discussion between the Dean of Engineering here at Mac and York University, a representative from the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board and an engineering professor/motivational speaker.

If you want to learn a bit more about the 2013 Global Engineering Conference, check out the website at http://mcmaster.ewb.ca/gec2013/index.html. Hope to see you at next year’s conference!

Global Engineering is one of the venture areas of Engineers Without Borders Canada, an organization that works towards social change in an effort eliminate poverty through accelerating development in rural Africa and policy change here in Canada.  We have chapters in universities, cities and companies across Canada! To learn more about Engineers Without Borders, click here: http://www.ewb.ca/

Later days,
Daniela