Focused on discussions between Gender to Gender and Generation to Generation, Gen2X 2015 was hosted by Young Engineers Australia and Women in Engineering.
With the success of previous years events and with the support of student and professional engineers the event attracted a high calibre of speakers from various disciplines. The speakers included;
- Dr Cris Birzer MIEAust - Engineers Australia South Australia President 2015, and Senior Lecturer at The University of Adelaide
- Dr Phil Crawley FIEAust CPEng NER - Water and Wastewater Engineer
- Lilian Henschke - Senior Project Manager, South Australia Water Corporation
- Dominic Pepicelli - Senior Engineer, Engineering Operations, Department of State Development
- Katie Hulmes - Environment and Approvals Manager, OzMinerals
- Liz Roder - Senior Advisor, Inside Infrastructure
The panel of speakers discussed topics ranging from the positives and negatives for communities receiving volunteer support and the most effective use of an engineer’s time in driving worldwide change and development in the long haul.
Panellist Liz Roder drew on her experience volunteering in East Timor to answer questions from students and young engineers about what type of person makes a good humanitarian engineer.
Ms Roder said she had come across three types of volunteers, "People who help, people who earn lots of money, and people that travel to have fun. In the end they all contribute."
Other panellists shared their volunteering experiences with Dr Phil Crawley’s discussing his time in Kiribati and Lilian Henschke’s time with APY Lands remote communities in South Australia, both delivering wastewater services.
Both panellists emphasised the importance of stakeholder engagement in all phases of the project to ensure ownership of the projects and to prevent projects from failing and toilets being left to ruin - a very important piece of advice for the audience to take home.
Dr Cris Birzer delivered an inspiring discussion and encouraged everyone to take part in some form of volunteering. Dr Birzer himself has been involved with volunteering for RedR Australia in the wake of the earthquakes in Nepal. He also spoke of other volunteering organisations engineers can volunteer through, including; Australian Civilian Corps, Australian Volunteers International, MSF (Doctors without Borders), Care Australia and many more.
Panellist Katie Hulmes offered this piece of final advice to engineers wanting to volunteer - remember “Each one, reach one” and we can all make a difference.