I was lucky to be invited by Engineers without Borders (EWB) to the 2018 Humanitarian Engineering conference the week before my departure to Vanuatu to join the Department of Water Resources (DoWR) in Luganville. This was especially good timing, given that the Director of the DoWR, Erickson Sammy, was a keynote speaker on the day. There was also a large focus on projects in Vanuatu, which gave me an exciting taste of what lay ahead of me.
The day was kicked off with the a short round of coffees (reusable mugs provided! #mahi) before jumping into the opening ceremony and the first presentation from Susan Freeman Green of Engineering New Zealand (Eng NZ).
The talk was focusing of the rebranding of Eng NZ and the change of focus to a more inclusive and interactive framework. While I agree that Eng NZ has made great steps in the last few years to become more accessible, the presentation itself was a missed opportunity to get a room full of bright sparks fired up. Gone are the days of talking to slides for an hour, and I found myself transported back 8 years to my engineering lecturers. Yes there were flashy stock images and a snappy video, but it was a great way to fire up the day. A plea to all presenters, stop presenting and find a way to get the crowd engaged!
Thankfully things improved for the next session with Eryn Hooper from Oceans Watch demonstrating a great example of true Human Centred Design in developing an ecological monitoring tool for the conservation of marine environments in the northern areas of the island of Efate, Vanuatu. The talk highlighted that locals were noticing deterioration of ecological resource in recent years, which climate change was expected to be accelerating. Oceans Watch developed a toolkit for ni-Van communities to use to monitor a number of important indicators, without introducing technology and materials that weren’t already available, reducing the risk of introducing pollution. The info was really well presented and got me thinking of innovative ways to implement monitoring for water supplies in rural communities.
Next up was the Director, Erickson Sammy, from the DoWR, based in Port Vila. Erickson presented a background of the geographical and cultural background of Vanuatu, which presents a number of unique challenges in developing a unified approach to water management. The communities are very dispersed and diverse, and there are many logistical challenges in assessing supplies, consultation and sourcing materials. On top of this, Vanuatu has no capacity to formally train local Engineers, so must rely on the youth to go abroad to gain qualifications, and then hope they return home to work. Despite this, they have implemented a National Implementation Plan (NIP) with the ambitious target of achieving 100% access to clean water by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. Erickson stated that enabling the communities to develop their own committees to navigate the water safety planning process was key to improving water quality and resilience.
The second keynote involved a joint presentation from Mary Curnow of Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA), Carys Everett (EWBNZ) and again Erickson Sammy (DoWR). This talk was focused on the collaborative effort between these three organisations to strengthen Vanuatu’s Water Sector. No pressure! This talk was all about developing the one of the roles that I will be filling as Provincial Water Sector Adviser for the northern islands. The partnership was developed to capitalise on the respective strengths of each party, in the goal of building the capacity of the DoWR staff over the next three years. The partnership had been underway for about a year, before getting someone on the ground. I even got up a had a quick chat about why I had applied for the position. Sounded like a good holiday!
Other notable chats were from Matt working with Live and Learn on improving access to sanitation facilities, Risu Kalotiti in developing rural Coconut Oil programs, and Sahara Arae from ADRA with an impressive water supply project using hydraulic ram pumps on the island of Tanna, yes all of these were based in Vanuatu. I sure got my moneys worth!
I highly recommend this conference for anyone looking to get into the development sector and add a bit more soul to your basic engineering. It was pretty inspiring to see the cool projects people were involved in, and added a lot of excitement to my impending departure.