Hear from Engineers Australia's 2016 Engineering Technologist of the Year, Shane Elson, on how his passion for engineering helped a community of South Kalimatan in Indonesia.
Humanitarian engineering is getting a lot of buzz at the moment as it should. It allows us as engineers to use our knowledge and experience to make a difference in the lives of people in great need.
For Shane Elson it is personal. Motivated by his faith in Christ, this is a very practical way to love God and to love his neighbours. It is simply taking what he loves, engineering, to those he loves, the people of South Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Shane and his family left the familiar in 2011 and headed for one of the poorer and more forgotten corners of Indonesia. In South Kalimantan, where drinking water has been a problem for generations without any viable solution, Shane helped start Kaganangan (www.kaganangan.org), a local non-profit focused on drinking water, sanitation and public health.
A high value on sustainability and reproducibility led his team to developed a program that begins by sitting around in villagers’ homes listening to the people talk about their culture, beliefs and hopes (social survey).
Secondly, they developed a public health education program in the local village dialect that teaches basic WASH concepts with a focus on the health of mothers and children. This program included the training of local women to carry on the education.
Thirdly, they built drinking water systems (rainwater) with local materials while simultaneously training local men to do the same.
Finally, they created a follow-up program to equip the locals to both maintain their current systems and build new systems (multiplication program). In conjunction with the local government, Kaganangan has completed projects in six villages, surveying more than 5000 people, educating more than 1000 people and providing drinking water year-round (drinking, cooking, handwashing) to over 500 people. The economic impact is that Kaganangan is helping to save locals around $90,000 AUD per year (approximately 80x their annual wage).
In 2016, Shane and his teams’ contribution were recognised by Engineers Australia when he was presented with the Engineering Technologist of the Year award for both Queensland and Australia. Shane’s desire is to encourage engineering for the purpose of building communities, not just infrastructure.
As we focus on and collaborate with the people, not only will the infrastructure be better designed but the lives of the people will be positively impacted and communities will be transformed. As engineers, let us not sell our skills short by failing to connect with that which is most important, the people.