Ben Best and Erin Antcliffe, along with support from Cat Denis and Gato Gourley, give an overview of their work with Eningeers Without Borders Canada (EWB) in Ghana and Burkina Faso. This is an excellent look into EWBs Agriculture as a Business and Governance and Rural Infrastructure programs, and into the life of an EWB African Programs Staff. We'll ending them a response video soon, so start thinking about questions and comments for them, as well as what parts of our chapter we'd like to showcase for the West African Programs team!

cheers,
Rob

Hey folks! As you all know we held our elections for the Winter 2011 VP positions earlier this week. After some amazing speeches and deep discussions, the results are in! First, I'd like to share my excitement over all of the amazing candidates that stepped forward last night. It's truly incredible to see the excitement and energy of our chapter moving forward, and to see the epic leaders that are coming out of EWB at UW! So, here are the results!

New VPs
Global Engineering Curriculum: Joe Chellakudam and Arthur Yip
Public Outreach: Nav Mokha and Marielle Magtibay
Fundraising: Umema Sharafali
Communications: Connor Allaby
Finance: Lorena Chan

Returning VPs
Chapter Development: Nacho Cardona
Campaigns: Christian Medina
Education: Diana Wong

Again, I want to congratulate all of the new VPs, and thank everyone that stepped up or came out to the elections this week!

cheers,
Rob Sparrow
President, B Stream

At the beginning of 2010 the University of Waterloo chapter of Engineers Without Borders set out to become the 2010 Chapter of the Year. Here's a look back at what happened during the first four months!

The deliverable of a great discussion group led by Christian Medina, Mike Rolfe, and Marc Andre Simard!
Please share this with your network and send a personalized version to your MP today!

Engineers Without Borders -University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1

We write to you as a committed group of student members of the University of Waterloo Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Chapter in order to express our concerns over the ineffectiveness of Canadian aid policy. We have gathered to discuss and express our concerns, so that you can address them effectively.

We have based our recommendations on the ACT campaign currently being deployed by EWB across Canada. This campaign addresses three main approaches to improve Canadian aid. Our aid should be made more Accountable by tracking and reporting our aid commitments, Creative by investing capital in innovative new projects and finally Transparent by making information about aid more accessible to everyone. We are not asking for more money or demanding that a larger percentage of our GDP spent on aid. We want to give you tools to increase the effectiveness of our current aid funds and systems. We want you to ACT for us.

In order to better understand what we can accomplish with this campaign, we have provided you with some tangible ideas and goals to bring forward as our MP. We want aid to be predictable so that organizations on the ground in developing countries can plan for and attain long-term goals given financial security. Sincerely addressing the needs of those in developing countries translates to sustained financial commitments on our part as donors. This way, provided aid will not change to follow the whims of politicians in donor countries but rather reflect realities and results on the ground.

We want a portion of our aid to be creative and dynamic. By allotting less than five per cent of our total aid to a special Innovation Fund that promotes solutions that work on the field, our aid could be made more efficient. By investing in many small-scale research projects and scaling up the most promising ones, Canadian aid could help more people in the field and multiply our investments.

Finally, we are convinced that a holistic approach to development also focuses on educating Canadian citizens on our commitments overseas. By engaging citizens of our own country in our international development processes and policies, we will become more conscious of our impact on the world, and build a collective consciousness on these issues. A tangible way to do this would be to publish all available data and evaluations about CIDA’s project on its website. This increased transparency would be beneficial to interested citizens and organizations.

We have collectively reached a consensus on Canadian aid efficacy and the measures this government and you as our representative can take to act on these pressing issues. As members of your riding, we look forward to seeing what actions on aid effectiveness you will take and look forward to your response on this important issue.

Sincerely,

Engineers Without Borders -University of Waterloo Chapter
This was written with the contributions of the signatories below and Executive members of the University of Waterloo Chapter.

EWB is organizing a soccer tournament to coincide with the ongoing FIFA World Cup. If you would like to take part in the tournament, please contact uwaterloo@ewb.ca with a list of team members.

Date: July 10 from 5:00PM to 9:00 PM
Place: CIF Soccer Court 4 (the one near to the lake)
Fee per team: $40
Format: 8 Teams 5 on 5 Robin Round, then knock out round
Inscription Deadline: Wednesday July 7th
Interested teams email: uwaterloo@ewb.ca
Prize: Support your African Enterprise of Choice through KIVA and EWB

On Thursday May 20, at 6:00 pm in the SLC Multi-Purpose Room, EWB UW hosted the first Discussion Group of the term. The topic was Building Leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa and was a product of the Leaders for Change conference (http://lfcsa2010.com/) EWB hosted in Lilongwe, Malawi a few weeks ago. The basic premise of the conference was that the EWB overseas team has and continues to work with individuals who have the drive and innovative ideas to create positive change within their communities; however, there exists, as identified by the pilot project’s planners, a gap of skills and knowledge, both technical and soft, role models in certain development fields, and networks between these Leaders for Change. Rob Sparrow, current President (B-Stream) of the UW chapter led the discussion, as he had had the opportunity to attend the conference while in Malawi for his second work term.

The group of twenty students were asked some key questions including “Is there a leadership gap in Malawi and Zambia? If yes, how do we, as Canadians, have a right to engage ourselves in leadership building overseas? What is our added-value as individuals or as an organization (EWB)? What can we do? What is our role, if it exists?”

The culture of youth leadership here in Canada is incredible; the opportunities for youth to attend conferences, seminars, workshops on leadership and capacity building are numerous. Think of the awards, scholarships, project seed money all focussed on Canadians under the age of thirty. I have been told that such a culture does not exist in Sub-Saharan Africa. That the understanding there of leadership is exclusive to executives and the upper echelon of an organization, those with titles. So, how did this youth capacity building here in Canada begin? What are its outcomes and results? Have we successfully created a movement? Are there mechanisms in place to continue developing leadership capacity for individuals? Do we follow up and follow through? Are their agreed-upon best practices that can be shared with other countries and communities?

My discussion group started off with the perennial question “What is leadership?” We settled on acknowledging that a definition would be too time consuming and instead shared our own ideas so that there was a general understanding. Many participants asked if a conference was the best mechanism for building leadership capacity. A common sentiment that was expressed was that personal connections and networks that are made are the most valuable product of any such conferences. Some key ideas and recommendations the discussion concluded in was that more personal and professional networks need to be built between these Leaders, in the planning for the second Leaders for Change conference, stakeholder consultation for conference programming is integral, that there should be multiple mechanisms available for attendees to share their lessons learned, and that a mentorship programme would likely be beneficial.

Some questions I was left considering:
-In trying to address the question “Is there a leadership gap?” my group and myself were at a complete loss as to how we could even answer this question; this is something I am constantly concerned about: not understanding our "end user" needs. It's just poor engineering, ya know.
-How do we find relevant and appropriate role models with respect to field of work, culture, age, race, etc.?
-With respect to our own culture of leadership here in Canada, how is the momentum of youth leadership further developed in the workplace?
-A leadership conference attracts self-identified leaders. How do you engage the rest of the population?
-Can we learn soft skills like leadership qualities (decision making abilities, management styles, etc.) in the same manner in which we learn technical skills? Is a lecture an effective way of learning soft skills? If not, why is this model still being used?
-Soft skills are (mainly) learnt from individuals whom we look up to and admire; we imitate their actions and methodologies. Can leadership be learnt without personal mentorship?

Check this out!

http://www.myoccupation.org/

Cheers,

DW