A total of 26 engineering and business students took part in an intensive six-week program.
Swinburne's Engineering Practice Academy partnered with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Australia to create an immersive in-country experience in Timor-Leste.
The program, held in July, took students on a journey to show the direct impact their work can have, and helped build an understanding of how to create successful innovation in complex systems.
A total of 26 students from the schools of engineering and business took part in the intensive six-week program, co-facilitated by the Academy and EWB. The students learned about the complexity of engineering projects and how to handle the requests of multiple stakeholders.
The program included two weeks in Timor-Leste where students were joined by two engineers from the Timorese organisation for women in engineering, Feto Enginhera and the Project was supported by the Australian Government's New Colombo Plan.
Exploring innovative ideas
EWB staff Bianca Anderson and Alison Stoakley, and Director of Community Partnerships at the Swinburne's Academy, Jennifer Turner, developed a brief for the student teams.
"In Timor-Leste, EWB is exploring innovative ideas for the priority areas of access to clean water, gender-inclusive hygiene management and climate-resilient agriculture," says Ms Turner.
"Every year, EWB's education programs generate a huge number of ideas for engineering solutions and we thought 'what if instead of generating new ideas we looked at the back catalogue and find ones from there that would be appropriate for Timor-Leste?'"
