My current position with Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) is a 10-month volunteer secondment with Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB).
I work closely with the NEWAH team to develop, implement and evaluate Water Safety Plans (WSPs) with communities in the Hilly and Terai regions of Nepal. One of the major objectives of this work is to capacity build the NEWAH team to be able to incorporate WSPs into all of their future and existing WASH projects.
I was always interested in maths and science growing up, but was also keen to work in the environmental and social sectors. Environmental Engineering seemed the perfect way of combining these interests.
I completed a Bachelor's degree in Science, majoring in Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry, and Engineering with Honours, majoring in Environmental Engineering. I then went on to study for my PhD in Water Resources Engineering in collaboration with the Water Corporation, the Western Australian water utility. At the same time I became heavily involved in EWB, and decided that I would like to combine all of these interests into work in the WASH sector on completion of my PhD.
