"Technological innovation is just one string in the bow. For development to be effective we need to take the bigger picture into account."

This is how Nigel Vaz sums up his three-month-long stay at Nepal last year, where he had gone as an EWB UK volunteer to work on a biogas project but ended up designing an awareness programme for increasing the access of the poor to the locally suitable Improved Cooking Stoves.

"The year 2007-8 has proved to be the most exciting and crucial year for Engineers Without Borders UK yet!" - Thalia Konaris, EWB-UK's CEO for the last year. With a bright new design and stories from every aspect of what we do, we are proud to share our review of the year with you.

Click on the picture to download the report (PDF - 3MB download).

The International Design Development Summit (IDDS), a unique set-up drawing on the experiences of development practitioners from different countries and backgrounds, led to a path-breaking development, which promises to take research on HIV prevention a step further.

A team of five students and an experienced medical doctor devised a method for disinfecting breast milk involving modification of an existing nipple shield to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from mother to child during breastfeeding.

Engineers Without Borders-UK (EWB-UK), a student led international development charity based in Cambridge, will soon be welcoming its first-ever paid Chief Executive thanks to The Vodafone Foundation.

Andrew Lamb, a young engineer with considerable experience in international development and disaster relief issues, was one of the six winners of the 'World of Difference' programme established by The Vodafone Foundation. The programme enables committed individuals to work for a year with a charity of their choice.

A manufacturing engineering graduate from the University of Cambridge, Sarah Ong decided to apply her education in one of the poorest countries of Central Asia. She spent the spring in the mountainous terrain of Tajikistan to work on an income generation project for locals from yak down (fine hair).

Sarah raised the money for this project through joint funding by an EWB-UK bursary and from the Royal Academy of Engineering. The project, 'Yak Yak', as it is called, aims to utilize yak down to generate income, which is currently thrown away by most of the locals. Ong now plans to go back for another two years.

A collaboration between EWB-UK and Sunlabob, a manufacturer of renewable energy technology based in Laos, has proved so successful that they have asked the charity for more volunteers.

The joint project, which is being overseen by the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy (LIRE), initially requested one volunteer to help with the testing, implementation and installation of a solar powered water purification system.

It may sound wishfully ambitious. But if everything goes well, Calum Thompson, an EWB-UK volunteer, may well be drawing up a set of parameters and testing engines running on biogas in practice in a small city on the West coast of India.

Thompson, a mechanical engineering graduate, is currently on a three-month-long internship at the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) at Phaltan in Maharashtra, India.

An on-going project between EWB-UK and Shelter Centre has been given added impetus thanks to interest from a group of international humanitarian organisations.

Bringing together over a dozen international humanitarian organisations including Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Shelter Centre has garnered support for the project which aims to create a booklet outlining how best to plan camps for refugees and internally displaced persons after conflicts, natural disasters or complex emergencies.

Caroline Cage, a sixth year architecture student, and Berta Moya, a third year biochemical engineer, began work on the joint EWB-UK/REDES project at the start of July and were given the task of carrying out risk assessments in communities where REDES has worked in the past; or hopes to work in the future.

Overseen by the charity's Infrastructure Department, the EWB-UK volunteers have been handing out questionnaires and talking to local interest groups in a bid to discover how the charity can best allocate its resources.

A former EWB-UK volunteer has won a silver medal for Great Britain at the Beijing Olympics.

Emma Pooley, who did an EWB-UK placement in Honduras in 2003, won a silver medal in the Cycling Time Trial event, beating third place Karin Thurig from Switzerland by over 34 seconds.

The 25 year-old, who is a engineering graduate from Trinity Hall Cambridge, led for most of the race until Kristin Armstrong of the United States entered a late time of 34 minutes 51.76 seconds to win gold.