EWB Calendars - a win win for all!

The amazing EWB 2009 calendars are in!

Engineers Without Borders welcomes you to witness our projects overseas. In Ghana, Burkina Faso, Zambia, and Malawi, over 70 EWB volunteers worked to build the capacities of our partner organisations this year.

On these pages, find their stories and personal accounts from the farms, fields and offices of the proud entrepreneurs that we work with. We hope that in reading these stories you will share in our vision of a better future.

To help fundraise the money to send me to Ghana, we are applying for grants, flipping burgers, selling samosas, and yes, selling these calendars! If you are interested in helping to support my fundraising targets and EWB's work in Africa, email me at adamfk@umanitoba.ewb.ca

Thanks!

Adam Fraser-Kruck

Well... I'm actually not in Ghana, yet.

Hey there and welcome to my Ghana blog!

I am very excited to be the overseas JF for the University of Manitoba chapter of EWB. For those that don't know me, this post will provide a bit of background.

From as long as I can remember, I have been interested in a just and fair world. For the most part of my youth I just tried to treat the people I met fairly, equally, and with kindness. It wasn't until high school that I started to put a more global focus on my values.

Through my involvement with The Marquis Project Youth Committee, I remember reading a particular New Internationalist article on child slavery on Cocoa farms that hit me so strongly that I decided to pretty much boycott all non Fair Trade chocolate. With Fair Trade, I felt that I actually could have an impact, and it significantly increased my interest in human development.

In my first of engineering at U of M, my Mother passed on from cancer. At this point I didn’t know what to do with my life, but I felt that if I could make the world better for at least a few people, then my life was still worth living. This intensified my desire to have a positive impact.

When something like this happens to you, it sure puts the statistic of "50,000 die every day unnecessarily as a consequence of poverty" in perspective.

After taking off eight months from school, I returned to U of M to pursue engineering again. I joined the U of M EWB chapter and began to get more excited. Once I attended the National Conference, I knew that EWB was an incredible organization that was going to help me have a larger impact and I decided to put my weight behind it.

Since then I have been quite dedicated and held numerous positions (past co-President, and VPs) and decided to step up my commitment.

Hope you follow along with me on the journey!

Adam