Sustainable development champion Alex Zahnd visits Monash engineering

27 September 2006 Monash Engineering, in collaboration with Engineers Without Borders, welcomed Mr Alex Zahnd from Kathmandu University to the Clayton campus on September 7th. Alex, a Swiss engineer, specialising in sustainable development, gave a lecture on the Humla project, an aid initiative which is bringing dignity to the lives of some of the poorest people in Nepal. The project was inspired by Alex’s own experiences living with his family in a remote village more than 7 days walk from the nearest road in North West Nepal. Lack of health and literacy knowledge, together with a total reliance on open fires in the houses for cooking, heating and lighting, condemns most Nepalese villagers to an early grave.

Alex Zahnd (left) and Peter Freere

Seeing this inspired Alex to offer a development package of sanitation, clean water, smokeless stoves, lighting and nutrition for malnourished children and functional literacy. Over the last ten years Humla has developed into a model of best practice for sensitive, sustainable development. Extensive social surveys conducted when the project began are being followed by annual surveys, planned for the next 20 years to determine the direct and indirect effectiveness of the project and provide a continuous feedback loop to address problems as they arise.

Alex is also working with Kathmandu University to train development designers and installers who will provide ongoing technical back up for Humla. Alex’s work has been supported by Peter Freere, who worked in Nepal for the past four years primarily introducing research and development and industrial liaisons to the engineering school of Kathmandu University. Peter returned to Australia to take up a research fellowship with the electrical and computer systems engineering department at Monash in July.