Stewart Davies (1989-1994)

Stewart made a conscious decision during his tertiary studies at Monash University between 1995 and 2001 to use the skills he had gained there to benefit others. This has since led him to a very unusual career which has included three years working for OXFAM (much of it voluntary) and, more recently, three years with Engineers Without Borders Australia, where he is currently he Program Director.
As he has indicated in his CV, ‘I have a passion for learning from various cultures and the interaction that comes with it’. This passion has led him to work in over a dozen of the world’s poorest countries, including Costa Rica, Panama, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nepal, Timor Leste and Cambodia.

In 2007, Stewart was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to explore community organisations around the world which use appropriate technology as the platform for development in developing countries. Through being a Churchill fellow, Stewart travelled to Nepal, India, the USA, Canada and the UK. He was also named winner of the Vodafone Foundation’s ‘Make a World of Difference’ program which enabled him to launch the Nepal and India program for Engineers Without Borders.

Stewart was approached recently by the College to share more of his journey and share some of the highlights from his experiences with Oxfam and Engineers Without Borders.
‘I was coming close to the end of my Economics degree at Monash and felt I could do more for society if I found another path rather than working for a finance company in Melbourne. I decided to visit my brother Andrew (Beaconhills 1986 -1991) at Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park in the Northern Territory to give me time and space to sort this out. After living and working in the indigenous community there, I was sure that I wanted to use my skills towards community development work. I also realized I had a strong desire to travel the world, not for a holiday but to really experience different cultures around the world through living and working in them, as I had done at Uluru.

As a result of these experiences, I enrolled in a Masters degree at RMIT to build up my skills in international community development work. Plenty of volunteer work followed and I loved every minute of it. Fortunately, the work I was involved in and the contacts I made led to paid employment in the sector – and I have been working on community development projects around the world for 5 years now!
I became involved with ‘Engineers Without Borders’ whilst I was working with Oxfam. I was connected to a young engineer in Melbourne who founded the concept of EWB in Australia and I immediately felt a connection which would enable me to use my skills and gain a greater insight into community development if I was to support this venture. In the end, it has been a wonderful experience to work for a smaller organisation and to be involved in a wide array of activities.

Some of the highlights I’ve experienced in my work relate, surprisingly, to the pain, suffering and hardship which I have witnessed as well as the beautiful people and cultures I’ve had the privilege to interact with. Something that has stood out to me and is still true to this day, a result of working in more than a dozen of the world’s poorest countries, is that the sense of community and the strength of their family networks generates a sense of wealth that far exceeds the monetary kind. Some of the poorest people, in a monetary sense, that I now know around the world have so much more happiness in their lives than most of the faces I see on a Melbourne train heading to work in the morning.

It has also been a highlight and a privilege to work with our local partners on the ground in these countries – Timor Leste, Zimbabwe and Nepal stand out as places where I have thoroughly enjoyed travelling in and working with local people. ‘