Why Apply for a Bursary?

Like many students, I was first attracted to join EWB by seeing opportunities for students provided by the EWB Placements scheme, and how you could potentially get involved with real and useful development projects abroad. After a year of involvement at my EWB university branch, I went along in February 2007 to my branch’s Placements launch to see what overseas opportunities would be offered for the summer of 2007.  Although they all looked inspiring, a number of the placements were in areas where I had no experience, and many of the others needed language skills that I lacked.

However, after speaking to the students giving the presentation, I learned that EWB also offered Bursary funding and support for students to instigate their own placements and projects – and that as you had to do more work in setting up your own Bursary than applying for a placement, you were more likely to be awarded a Bursary (subject to a good application!), than to be accepted onto a placement.

So I went off feeling enthused and inspired, and resolved to find my own placement.

How to find a Bursary Project?

Finding a project was easier said than done! First I thought about what I personally (and ideally) wanted to get out of a placement project:

1. Be able to use some of the technical knowledge I’d learnt so far in my engineering degree and EWB activities

I then felt confused and slightly concerned that I was trying for quite a few different things, and still didn’t have a particular project in mind.

So I investigated a number of routes:

1. Asking friends who I know had done work abroad or projects with EWB if they knew of any good projects or organisations where a third-year student engineer could be useful
2. Speaking to academics at my university who I knew had been involved in interesting-sounding projects abroad
3. Googling volunteering opportunities and work worldwide.

Surprisingly, for me it was option 3 that came up with a promising-sounding project. After hunting through various volunteering websites (and filtering out all the gap-year organisations that wanted you to pay £1500+ for a two week “opportunity”), I found an organisation based in Ecuador who ran a number of projects in conjunction with different groups and organisations around the country. In particular, there was one indigenous community based in the Amazon rainforest who were looking for experienced volunteers for a number of areas – but in particular to help with their community water system. This included help with the engineering aspects, helping administer and run the system, and running with water education activities and awareness work within the community.

I spent quite a bit of time emailing with the main organisation and then also with the community volunteer leader. It then turned out that a couple of students from America had been working on the project the previous summer, and along with the community they were invaluable in helping me to put together a useful and structured plan of work that I was able to use in my Bursary application (and also reassure me that the organisation was all legitimate!). One extra plus for me was that I would be able to fly out to Quito (Ecuador’s capital) and undertake Spanish lessons there while living with a family for a few weeks before moving out onto the project.

After checking everything out thoroughly, I put in my application for a bursary and happily was successful (I also managed to obtain additional funding from my university Alumni Foundation).

I had a fantastic (if occasionally unusual and surprising)  experience and learnt a huge amount – and I think that the extra work I had to put in beforehand made for a much more rewarding placement for me. If you’re interested, what actually happened can be found at my blog, at http://hayley-ecuador-blog.blogspot.com/