Introducing EWB-USA's 2027-2030 Strategy

Overview:

For 25 years, EWB-USA chapters and volunteers have delivered real engineering solutions, project by project, community by community. That work has built something incredibly valuable: deep partnerships, a track record of quality engineering, trust on the ground, and meaningful volunteer experiences. Our 2027–2030 strategy builds on that foundation. The heart of what we do isn't changing; how we do it together is.

What’s Changing:

As the graphic shows, each stage has built on the last: stronger projects, then stronger partners, and now stronger systems. Engineering excellence, partnership with communities, and volunteers carrying the work and growing as leaders along the way remain at the core of who we are. What’s new is how our work connects. Ten projects concentrated in one region can shift a systemic issue in a way that ten projects spread across ten countries can't. Through coordinated, country-level strategies, chapters, volunteers, and Purposeful Partners will each contribute to a shared effort, so individual projects add up to lasting change across a region.

In practice, EWB-USA and our most experienced Purposeful Partners will develop plans to achieve programmatic funding* to address core infrastructure needs in a region. The work will be delivered collectively, with chapters taking on individual projects that contribute to those programmatic outcomes. These would be similar to EWB-USA’s current projects, often with more defined scopes and partial budgets already secured. This is a gradual shift. Programmatic opportunities will become available over time, starting in Uganda and Ecuador.

We can’t do this well everywhere at once, so we’re focusing our efforts through our country tier structure, based on where our partnerships and track record are strongest. We’re starting with coordinated, country-level strategies in Uganda, Ecuador, and the U.S., where we’re ready to pursue programmatic-level work now. We’re also investing in Peru, Kenya, and Guatemala, strengthening partners and building toward programmatic work in the next strategic cycle. Collectively, these six countries make up our first strategic tier (Tier 1).

Project intake and delivery in Tier 2 countries (Bolivia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ghana, Malawi, Nepal, Panama, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Zambia) will continue as usual, and existing projects in Tier 3 countries (current EWB-USA working locations not listed as part of Tiers 1 or 2) will be completed carefully and responsibly closed out.

By 2030, we'll measure success not by how many projects we've delivered, but by whether communities are still thriving because of them, whether our partners have grown stronger, and whether together we've built the credibility to take that impact further. That is the power of EWB-USA as a network: when we're aligned, we can create lasting change on a scale no single project could achieve alone.

Dive Deeper:

To learn more about where we're headed, start with these two resources:

• 2027–2030 Strategy Overview: a two-page summary of the strategy, what's changing for chapters and volunteers, and how we're focusing our work across countries.
• Strategy FAQ: answers to common questions about current and future projects, programmatic funding, U.S. projects, and what your chapter can do now. We'll keep it updated as the strategy rolls out.

*Programmatic/ Institutional Funding: Grants from governments, multilateral agencies, or large foundations where EWB-USA, or one of our Purposeful Partners, receives the funding. Unlike philanthropic or corporate funding, these grants are structured around a defined program of work, with outcome-related reporting requirements and multi-year commitments. Securing this type of funding is a signal that EWB-USA's work is credible and operating at a systems level, and it unlocks a fundamentally different scale of impact than project-by-project philanthropic support alone.