General News

The Tonga Renewable Energies Project took place in Nov 2009.  It is a joint initiative between EWBNZ and EcoCare Pacific Trust. EWBNZ have two teams, one from Auckland and one from Canterbury working to implement renewable energy schemes for two high schools in Tonga.

Read more: http://www.ewb.org.nz/projects

New Zealanders keen to join the RedR NZ Register – and be eligible to apply for emergency deployments overseas – are invited to attend two humanitarian aid training courses.

These short intensive courses are a mandatory part of applying to the RedR NZ Register and provide budding humanitarian aid workers the essential practical skills and knowledge they will need to help others and keep safe in the field.

The RedR NZ courses are open to people with a wide range of skills, including logistics, civil engineering, emergency management, security, administration, accounting, child protection, health, law, quantity surveying, and communications.

"So, what is EWB anyway?!"

Join us as we have a big group discussion of what EWB is and should be. CEO Ross Copland will be attending, and there will be some interesting case studies that really reveal a lot about how development should (and shouldn't!) be done.

- Bring along some baking to share for after the meeting!
- Prepare an interesting fact about the Pacific. Most interesting fact about the South Pacific wins a prize!

Facebook link:

Note: This is not an EWB position but may be of interest to our members.

The School of St Jude Tanzania is located at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro and just twenty minutes from Arusha, the safari capital of Tanzania. As a non denominational sponsorship-supported school for the poorest of the poor, the school has grown rapidly in just eight years such that today it educates 1,300 children and is spread across four campuses. We are looking for a Maintenance Supervisor -ideally an enthusiastic and good team player to help oversee and work with the school team of electricians, plumbers, carpenters and outside building contractors.

RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?invites&eid=111459385552322

Join up to the Auckland Students Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108838479140582 to be notified about future Auckland Student chapter events.

- The EWB Auckland Students team

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is keen to recruit engineers for a variety of assignments and is particularly interested in hearing from qualified women, in order to improve the gender balance in our recruitment.

Being a UNV volunteer can be an immensely satisfying professional challenge. There are constant requirements for highly qualified women and men in roles from engineering and project management to vehicle maintenance. More info..

The EWBNZ Auckland Tonga team are pleased to report that the solar groundwater pumping scheme they installed at Tonga College in December 2009 survived cyclone Rene in February.

Tonga College were lucky the cyclone only hit them for an hour otherwise more damage to the school would have been seen. Tonga College Principal Mr Oko, says "All fruits on the fruit trees were blown off so we will shortly face a period of food shortage from this [but] the project is still in place, working well as expected".

The solar scheme was even used for boiling water and charging the teachers cell phones during a 2 day outage of mains electricity to the school following the cyclone!

EWBNZ is excited to announce that “Kick-Off 2010” will be held on Monday, March 15, 2010 at University of Auckland’s School of Engineering at 20 Symonds Street, sponsored by Hilti. www.hilti.co.nz

EWBNZ is currently looking for interns to assist in the office with fundraising, media, and human resource management over a period of 3 months. If you are looking for some valuable work experience in these fields, you can achieve this while contributing towards a great team and organisation.

More info

EWBNZ's Auckland Renewable Energies Tonga team recently got back from Tonga where they implemented a solar powered groundwater pumping system at a school. Please see the attached story for more info on their trip!