When Sadia Abdullah arrived in Vanuatu, the first thing she noticed was the heat and the humidity. The second was how friendly everyone was, and the strong sense of community. 

Sadia flew into Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, in August 2022. Months earlier, she was at home in Sydney under tight COVID restrictions and eager to go anywhere outside her living room. Now, just a three-hour flight from Sydney, she was in beautiful Vanuatu, a country she knew almost nothing about a few months prior — just “that it was a dot in the Pacific”. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands with a population of around 300,000 people, located east of Australia on a similar latitude to Cairns.

Sadia had always known that she wanted a job that allowed her to travel. With her interest in science and maths at school, civil engineering felt like an obvious choice at university. She figured “all of society needs help building”. She had several years’ experience under her belt as a civil engineer in Sydney when a colleague sent her an advert for a volunteer role created in partnership with the Australian Volunteers Program and Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) for a technical services engineer role with the Department of Water Resources (DoWR) in Vanuatu. Though she had initial apprehensions, she seized the opportunity to fulfil her original reason for pursuing engineering. Sadia was accepted to volunteer for 12 months abroad with EWB through the Australian government funded Australian Volunteers Program.

Sadia and her colleagues at the Department of Water Resources (DoWR) in Vanuatu, who gifted her a dress and basket at her farewell.

Volunteering as a technical services engineer with the DoWR wasn’t just about planning, designing and building water supply systems in rural areas; it was problem-solving in the extreme. The first few months working in Vanuatu were challenging for Sadia as she adjusted to the local culture, ways of work and different availability of materials and resources on the remote archipelago. These challenges meant Sadia had to employ a different type of engineering to what she was familiar with in Sydney. She returned to first principles engineering: understanding local community needs through consultation and problem-solving to deliver the best solutions with the resources available.

Sadia understood that as a foreigner joining the team, there would be an adjustment period culturally for herself and the Vanuatu team, “where we were trying to understand each other and how we work”. While the work of an engineer can be stressful with tight deadlines and complex problem-solving, Sadia stayed true to herself and her values of “being friendly, always treating others with respect and being open and honest about how you do things”. 

After a few months of taking lessons in Bislama, the main local language, Sadia began to put her skills to use. “I might as well try to speak Bislama and make a fool of myself rather than make them all uncomfortable speaking English”, she said. The impact was immediate: “The moment I just pushed through with speaking Bislama, everyone became much more comfortable, and I think it’s just so much nicer to converse in your home language, right?” She bonded with the team in Vanuatu and maintained a strong working relationship – they still keep in touch to this day. 

Sadia and the team troubleshooting a pump to provide an alternative access to water for a community.

In a country prone to natural disasters, Sadia and the DoWR team had serious challenges to overcome together. Following twin tropical cyclones Judy and Kevin in March 2023, mass destruction devastated the water supplies of rural communities in the archipelago. It was in this six-week emergency response period that Sadia faced a steep learning curve, working directly with affected communities on Tanna island assessing water needs and water systems, fixing leaks, and collecting data for long-term design and construction. Though initially confronting, Sadia found these periods of work to be some of the most rewarding of her time in Vanuatu, as she witnessed the resilience and spirit of the community as they came together after the cyclones to clean up the debris.  

The local community also mobilised to help themselves and each other by digging out the pipe work that had been covered from landslides, and rebuilding and maintaining the water supply system. When the water supply was finally restored, the community was so grateful and happy, they threw a big party to celebrate. For Sadia, seeing the impact of her work was rewarding, especially to witness how empowered the community were following almost a month without water. The silver lining from this emergency response is that the team is now better equipped to respond to future cyclones, based on the work and documentation Sadia and the team prepared in 2023. 

Throughout the year, Sadia enjoyed her time off work, indulging in some of the pleasures of Vanuatu’s island life – snorkelling, hiking, and exploring parts unknown to tourists, with the guidance of her new local friends. 

Sadia and her housemate and fellow Australian volunteer hiking to the peak of Nguna Island, an outer island off the north coast of Efate, Vanuatu.

Living in Vanuatu and helping engineer rural water systems gave Sadia time to reflect on her father’s upbringing in rural Bangladesh, where his village relied on a ground pump for water. “It would actually be fantastic to use all of these new skills that I’ve learned, this information, this new skillset to apply it to Bangladesh… I think it did inspire me to get back in touch with my roots and see what I can do for my village and family in Bangladesh”. 

Off the back of this year-long adventure in Vanuatu, Sadia feels positive about the future. Having learnt so much about herself and her capabilities both professionally and personally, she is excited to take on whatever future opportunities come her way. Sadia is looking forward to the day she can impart her wisdom to the volunteers who follow in her footsteps and provide them with the same care and support she received from the EWB network. Her advice to anyone thinking about volunteering overseas with EWB – “just do it! If it’s something you’re leaning towards, you should just grab the opportunity.”

If you’re interested in volunteering overseas as an Australian Volunteers Program Field Professional with EWB, check out our current opportunities at ewb.org.au/volunteer. The Australian Volunteers Program is an Australian Government-funded initiative.

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Photovoice is a qualitative participatory research method that empowers community members to document and reflect upon their lived experience through photography. It was pioneered by researchers in 1992 as a tool to collect stories from women living in villages in the rural Yunnan province of China. The researchers asked the women to share their lived experience by taking photographs in their communities and then writing a reflection to accompany each photo. Their reflections were then shared with policy makers seeking insight about the community’s needs. 

By centering community members’ voices and expertise in their lived experiences, photovoice improves the quality of collected data by reducing potential bias imparted by data collectors external to the community. Today, photovoice can be used either as a tool for intervention or as a monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) tool to provide feedback and to reflect upon a specific project.  

Photovoice is implemented through five steps:

1) Recruit participants

• This is usually a diverse group of people from the target community impacted by the project or project stakeholders.

2) Orient participants

• Provide a specific prompt relevant to what is being investigated to guide participants.

3) Create images

• Equip participants with knowledge of photography and smartphone camera use to elicit quality photographs.

4) Interpret images

• Facilitate reflections from participants about their captured photographs with guided questions to provide insight into their perspectives.

5) Utilise photo-stories

• Advocate for positive change and improve programs with the resultant photo-stories.

Dr Jess MacArthur

The introduction of photovoice at EWB was facilitated by Dr Jess MacArthur, an expert in qualitative research and a background in chemical engineering. As part of her PhD studies with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney, Jess created the qualKit, a curated set of qualitative MEL tools designed for gender equality and social inclusion programs. Jess now works as a research and learning adviser with Pro-Wash and Scale and as an adjunct fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Futures in monitoring and evaluation of water and sanitation programming. After being approached by EWB, Jess generously volunteered her time and expertise to train EWB’s Engineering team on photovoice. 

The photos produced using photovoice may not make for visually striking images but they can powerfully advocate for positive change and amplify the voices of local community members. “It’s not necessarily about the quality of the photo, it’s more about what the photo is representing,” said Jess.

As part of the Cambodian team’s photovoice training, they conducted photovoice in Ankaol village in Kep province as an intervention tool to identify the different community experiences relating to open defecation. While the challenges regarding women’s safety around accessing sanitation is well documented, the use of photovoice brought to light the challenges associated with unsafe access to sanitation as a result of wet weather, particularly for elderly residents or people living with a disability. The training itself was also an eye-opening experience for the team. When given the photovoice prompt, they found themselves seeing the community (a community they had visited numerous times) in a new light. 

Photovoice “opens the net to capture things that we normally don’t think about,” explained Jess. When participants of different demographic groups (such as women and men) are given the same prompt, there is a plethora of research showing that they produce very different images, demonstrating the value of documenting diverse community perspectives. “Each person coming to the same topic will create an image that’s very different … which is very valuable – seeing what they highlight and what’s important to them,” said Jess. 

Throughout the training process, the team learnt important considerations around the implementation of photovoice, such as partnering with community members to ensure prompts are culturally sensitive. While photovoice can be a tool to rebalance power, it is important to consider that the photovoice process can also be a barrier to participants who have low digital literacy. Spending time to equip participants with the skills and knowledge to document their stories is essential to ensure ethical data collection.

The addition of photovoice to EWB’s MEL toolkit will enable the team to strengthen their data collection processes and inform learnings. Capturing diverse perspectives through the power of imagery will complement the collection of quantitative data and allow EWB to continue to learn from our successes and challenges.

EWB would like to thank Dr Jess MacArthur for her generosity in volunteering her expertise and time to train the international teams and facilitate the use of photovoice at EWB. 

Interested in volunteering your skills and expertise with EWB? Take a look at our current volunteer opportunities. You can also get in touch with us at info@ewb.org.au.

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A new place-based Outreach program – designed by Indigenous people for Indigenous young people – was recently piloted in a small community in Far North Queensland in collaboration with Engineers Australia’s Indigenous Engineers Group and Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation, with the goal to inspire and support the next generation of Indigenous Engineers. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 3.2 per cent of the Australian population but only 0.5 per cent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) university graduates in Australia – despite research showing that Indigenous people are just as interested in science as their peers. A newly launched Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program seeks to change this. 

This Youth Outreach initiative, led by Engineers Australia’s Indigenous Engineers Group (IEG) and supported by EWB Australia, kicked off earlier this year in June with support from our community partner, Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation (YAC). The first pilot for this program was delivered to a group of 25 school-aged First Nations students in Coen, a small community situated in central Cape York in Far North Queensland. 

The two-day workshops and broader Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program was the culmination of findings and design work from the Yarrawarra Forum held in October 2022, as well as research gathered from the Reimagining Pathways precursor project during 2020-21. The Yarrawarra Forum saw 27 delegates from around Australia convene on Gadigal Country to collaborate on the design of an Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program. Delegates included Indigenous engineers, students, elders and educators – who together share a lived-experience as Indigenous engineers, or experience as educators of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The aim of the Forum was to kick-start the design of a new approach to engage Indigenous Youth in engineering pathways. What resulted was a unanimous, clear vision for an Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program. 

Pilot workshops in Coen

Caption: Facilitators, Grant and Sativa, helping participants draw their drone designs.

After consultation with the Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation, the project team with guidance from all-Indigenous Steering Committee developed and finalised workshop activities specific to the context and community participating in the program. 

The first day of workshops focused on flight, with links drawn between boomerang design and modern aerodynamic technology such as planes and drones. Younger students were tasked with designing their own drones whilst older students learnt how to use block coding so they could fly a drone to land on a specific spot. Lama Lama rangers from Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation shared information with the participants about how they use modern drone technology and its application to their traditional knowledge and work on Country, such as monitoring the turtle population during breeding season.

Facilitators, Grant and Sativa, testing the students’ canoes at the river while students watched on.

The second day of workshops was themed around water and its importance and use on Country. Younger students engaged in water filtration and canoe building activities using materials found on Country, wrapping up the day by testing the buoyancy of their inventions at the local river. Meanwhile, older students were tasked with an engineering project of supplying water to a new town and the challenges it would involve. They were asked to wear an engineering hat of their choice that best suited their interests – be it electrical, mechanical or civil, and encouraged to think in those terms in their pursuit of solutions to the problem.  

At the end of the workshops, students were awarded with awards like ‘MVP’ and ‘Best Listener’, while EWB and IEG received positive feedback from students, reporting an overall increased interest in studying engineering. Finally, a yarning Q&A with the volunteer facilitators was held, where they shared how they came to be engineers, the kind of engineering they do, and past projects they’ve worked on.  

First of its kind: Indigenous-Led Youth Outreach program delivered on Country

Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program volunteer facilitators from left to right: Isaac Barton, Sativa O’Connor, Grant Maher and Josh MacLeod.

From the program’s inception at the Yarrawarra Forum, to its design and development over the past year and its ultimate facilitation in Coen, Indigenous engineers have steered this project by ensuring its relevance to First Nations-specific challenges and perspectives. 

And the young participants of the workshops were not the only ones reaping the benefits of shared knowledge. Volunteer facilitators were afforded the opportunity to spend the day prior to the workshops on Lama Lama Country with Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation, building relationships and a connection with Country. One facilitator reflected that delivering the experience had “re-sparked their passion for youth outreach programs”. 

What’s next?

Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program facilitators with Lama Lama staff and rangers in Coen, Far North Queensland.

After the successful delivery of the inaugural Indigenous-led Youth Outreach program, the team is looking to run a second pilot later this year in another community in Australia, likely in the Kimberley region of WA. To continue to deliver this valuable work and support future Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in STEM, these programs require generous sponsorship and funding. 

If you share our commitment to equitable access to technology and increased First Nations representation in engineering, please contact us to find out more and consider if your organisation may be able to sponsor this program at partnerships@ewb.org.au.  

If you are an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander engineer or working in the STEM sector and are interested in volunteering your time to facilitate these workshops in the future, please complete this expression of interest form.  

A second Yarrawarra Forum is being planned for later in the year or early 2024, to evaluate and review the pilot programs against original goals by Indigenous delegates, including volunteers and pilot community representatives, to ensure the program is truly Indigenous-led before a 2024 launch and set up for success.

We would like to acknowledge the generous support of our program partner, Aurecon, who supported the design and delivery of this first Indigenous-led Outreach pilot as well as the 2022 Yarrawarra Forum, as well as ongoing support from Engineers Australia. We’d also like to thank Bindy and David Koadlow who funded the Reimaginating Pathways precursor project which paved the way for this program. We would also like to acknowledge the Lama Lama Traditional Owners who supported our time on Country and thank the Yintjingga Aboriginal Corporation and their staff who supported the co-design process for workshop activities. We are also grateful to the support of our other corporate partners who supported their staff to volunteer their time to deliver this program and who support EWB Australia’s youth outreach programs more broadly. 

We would also like to extend a big thank you to our program facilitators; Josh MacLeod (EWB STEM Pathways Lead), Grant Maher (Chair of the Indigenous Engineers Group & Director of Jabin Group), Sativa O’Connor (Arup Technical Drafter) and Isaac Barton (co-founder of Blak Label Music). We are also excited to share that since volunteering on the program, Isaac has recently started a new job at EWB Australia working on our First Nations focused Youth Outreach Programs.

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