UNESCO YOUTH FORUM 2013: EWB Outreach
Article for Virgin Media
From the 29th-31st October 2013, I was invited to the UNESCO Youth Forum to run an Engineers without Borders (EWB) Outreach Workshop.
The best place to start is at the beginning, so first of all: Who are Engineers without Borders? How am I involved in their Outreach Programme? What is the Youth Forum?
Engineers without Borders are an organisation that aims to create “massive small change” – a pretty big mission statement! Essentially, it means that we implement small changes which lead to larger changes. An example would be installing a wind turbine in a remote village in Africa using local resources and training the local community to maintain it (a small change) which then results in the village having both electricity and skilled villagers (a massive change).
Granted, this is a very simple example, but in essence this is what EWB strives for: empowering new engineers to remove barriers to human development.
EWB in the UK offer many programmes including training, events, international projects as well as Outreach. Outreach is mainly focused on the younger generation: we run interactive workshops which explore global, environment and social challenges. Our main message is to use appropriate technology for the issue at hand.
I’m currently the Outreach National Coordinator for the UK; I have been in this role for just over a year of a two year position. I started my involvement with EWB whilst at University where I started Outreach at the University of Warwick Branch and in my final year become co-president of the branch. Overall I have been involved with EWB for 5 years (so far!). We have around 23 branches that actively run Outreach and last year they “outreached” over 3,000 students (excluding the science and engineering festivals we attend).
The partnership between EWB-Outreach and UNESCO started around a year a go and resulted in Outreach being invited to go to the University of Nigeria Nsukka in June where we trained 120 students to start-up and run Outreach with their local community and outreached 2,000 students in 2 days. UNESCO was very happy with our work and we have since been invited to celebrate World Teachers Day in October and subsequently to run a workshop at the UNESCO Youth Forum.
The purpose of the Youth Forum was to promote change and innovation through young people. The Youth Forum’s main purpose is to build a bridge between UNESCO, its member states, young people and their organisations. It aims to reinforce the competencies of young people to drive change in their communities and active partners in peace building and the promotion of sustainable development.
I was invited along by the Natural Science department to promote the work that Engineers without Borders do in their Outreach Programme. I ran workshop called ‘Going the Distance’ which explores transport and transport infrastructure. It highlights the importance of having good infrastructure to support the transport we use. All participants were given a case-study to build a bridge to help a community. The villagers have to cross a river to get to the local market, school and hospital. During the dry season villages walk over boulders and rocks since the water is low, but in the rainy season the villagers cannot cross the river as the water level rises above the boulders and rocks. The bridge design had specific criteria which had to be met. Unfortunately, the previous sessions overran, so we had to improvise and go through the presentation very quickly and they only had 15 minutes to build a bridge!
This workshop was very interesting. Usually the workshop is run for students aged between 7-18 years old, but this time the participants were in their late twenties and early thirties. We weren’t aware of the demographic before the session but the workshop was still successful and everyone had a great time rushing to put together their bridges!
The atmosphere of the 3 days was electric, full of young people wanting to change the world and work together doing so. Every day UNESCO held a 15 minutes of fame session which was probably the most inspiring session of all.
Two participants stuck out the most for me:
Naadiya Moosajee who is the co-founder and CEO of an organisation called South African Women in Engineering (SAWomEng) which helps to develop the next generation of engineering leaders in South Africa and Kenya. She is also a board member of the International Youth Foundation which works on youth skills development, leadership and entrepreneurship throughout the world. Alongside all of this, she has also just set-up her own fair-trade fashion company and is known as the most influential woman in South Africa. We were in the same workshop session as each other and I watched her present, she is truly a leader and an amazing woman, yet so down to earth, one evening we sat together and watched SIGNMARK, a sign language rapper (SIGNMARK uses sign language, and a co-performer raps or sings the lyrics).
Nick D’Aloisio is a young UK entrepreneur, a computer programmer and developer of the app Summly. He is the youngest person to receive a round of venture capital (at the age of 15), and in March he sold his Summly App to Yahoo for $30million making him the youngest self-made millionaire ever. An amazing achievement for someone so young! He self taught himself these skills, just out of interest and is lucky to have found his passion so young. I hope that the Outreach work I do may one day inspire a great idea in a young person to then do something as inspirational as Nick.
I had a fantastic time, but then again it would have been difficult not so since I was in Paris and surrounded by such influential and enthusiastic people. UNESCO are still very keen to work with EWB Outreach which is great since it raises our profile and provides us with more inspiration and ideas for workshops.
During the next few months Outreach will be having a hectic time as we’re releasing a new workshop we’re working with Practical Action called Make the Link: Power for the World: it explores how renewable energy can provide power to rural communities and appreciate how simple designs can provide this solution. The workshop introduces the concept of technology justice and the Millennium Development Goals. We’re also attending the Big Bang Fair in March which is a huge Science and Engineering fair. We will be promoting the Make the Link workshop along with some fun practical activities for participants to take part in such as a rope washer pump and a pedal powered bubble machine.
For now, it’s back to work on the Engineering Graduate scheme which is providing great training and skills which I have found has helped to improve how I run Outreach although I still have a lot of learning to do!
What is Outreach? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qThcIjuL-Go
Day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_GGFxr8Xvo
Day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VlgHrVu0q8
Day 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU6V746dluM
