Engineers Without Borders Canada

Engineers Without Borders is a movement of professional engineers, students, overseas volunteer staff, and supporters across Canada. Together, they are almost 50,000 strong. Engineers Without Borders creates opportunities for rural Africans in Zambia, Malawi, Ghana and Burkina Faso to create positive change in their lives. They harness the skills and creativity of the Canadian engineering sector to find practical solutions to one of the world’s most urgent problems – extreme poverty. They believe that the next generation of rural Africans should have the same opportunities to improve their lives, that they have right here at home. To help make this a reality, their members and volunteers apply all the creativity, technical skills and problem-solving approach for which engineers are known. In Africa, their committed and innovative volunteers work in partnership with local organizations and communities – combining their knowledge and experience to find unique solutions and devise innovative ways to apply them. Their work is focused on enabling rural Africans the opportunity to access clean water, generate an income from humble farms, and access critical infrastructure and services. At home, EWB is leveraging their network of 34 professional and student chapters to create lasting change across Canada. They engage Canadians, their government, companies, and universities on a widespread scale, to build their connections to Africa and make choices that better promote and contribute to human development. At Engineers Without Borders Canada, they strive to unlock human potential. They unlock human potential in Sub-Saharan Africa by investing in forward-thinking social enterprises. They support local innovators to accelerate their impact and apply their innovations on a global scale, to the benefit of millions. They unlock human potential in Canada by fostering a community of leaders—supporting a network of established thought leaders while developing the next generation of pioneers. They unlock human potential globally—collaborating with innovators across boundaries, consolidating their similarities, and learning from their differences. This enables people to contribute individually and as a collective, and to challenge the national and global policies, systems and institutions that contribute to the flawed status quo. Their fellow human beings continue to live in poverty with diminished choices: struggling to access food, water, sanitation and basic health services. In a world where there are enough resources for everyone to thrive, this is simply unacceptable. It is an affront to their beliefs. It is an affront to what is right. Their vision is a world where everyone’s basic needs are met and where everyone can live to their full potential. Their mission is to catalyze changes that address the root causes of poverty and inequity by investing in people and ideas that will contribute to building an equitable and sustainable world. They train Systems Change Leaders and partner Fellows with inventive social enterprises to foster untried methods of delivering services and new ways of operating. Together, they develop robust frameworks for businesses to innovate. They collaborate with first-of-kind innovators in Sub-Saharan Africa to eliminate the region’s entrenched challenges. While the initiatives are local, they have the potential to incite global change. The learnings from every venture are scalable and continuously refined and applied throughout the world, to the ongoing benefit of countless communities. Although they focus on Africa, the change they seek is not constrained. They work for universal change—meaningful, positive transformation at a personal level, and for communities, companies and the planet.