Two weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) National Conference in Toronto. Throughout the three days which contained information to sleep in a potent 10:1 mix, I found my self in an internal battle. On one side was compassion and good intent, urging me to do all I could to help others who were not born with the same opportunities and rights as I was. On the other side was history – what right did us Canadians have trying to show other people how to develop after decades of failed aid and when we certainly are nowhere near sustainable and equitable development ourselves.
Engineers Without Borders had been founded with the attitude of approaching poverty as a technical problem with an engineering solution. They quickly realized that development is much more than just technology, and have since matured into an organization that seeks to build capacity of the undertrained and underfunded government departments already set up to address issues such as water, sanitation, and agriculture. With “It’s not sexy, it works” as a slogan, EWB has stepped back from the clearly-defined parameters of a technical problem and reassessed the complex realities of poverty and development. And I think this stepping back is something we all need to do.
This thought was crystalized as I was watching a PBS documentary on British Petroleum for one of my classes. As a helicopter mounted camera panned over an offshore drilling platform, I was awed by the hundreds of millions of dollars of amazing engineering, fabrication, and construction that went into it. I was also awed by how ridiculous it seemed. Why are our industries spending so much and depending on an industry we know is ecologically damaging from extraction to consumption and will certainly run out? A rethinking seems to be in order, and I don’t know how changing the way we look at things seems less feasible than continuing in a direction we know isn’t optimized for human welfare.
I myself was doing a lot of rethinking at National Conference. For the first time, I recognized EWB as foreign development NGO, and realized it’s implications beyond what I had come familiar with in the UW chapter. Being able to hear first-hand about the problems agricultural extension agents face in Ghana, what it’s like to take on government corruption in Kenya, or how things have changed in the world of development over the last 30 years from people who have spent their lives working with these issues was incredible. I learned that it’s not enough to hold a debate between halves of your brain, you must invite the thoughts and feelings of people that also care and think about these same issues.
The name of this year’s conference was Kumvana; which means “unite, so we may discuss and understand,” in Chichewa, a Malawian language. Open discussion is key, whether over a personal struggle, an engineering problem, and espescially with issues of such complexity as poverty. Speaking with very friendly people with passions and problems similar to myself was great, and speaking with a few people in particular helped me resolve my personal issues with aid projects. In the spirit of frank and open discussion, this past National Conference marked the release of the third annual Failure Report, which has been attracting a fair amount of attention lately. It is a chronicle of worst practices, resources misallocations, and unwise assumptions meant to help us learn what hasn’t worked and why so that we may progress, and not just continue. In the traditional “holier than thou” mindset of aid organizations , publishing failure reports is a big deal. Engineers know that technical mistakes must be learned from to protect public safety, and carry a symbol of historic failure to remind them of this duty. This sense of humility has not yet pervaded the aid industry. Whether it’s because the mistakes have less clear causes, because there is no tradition of critical analysis, or due to a limited perspective, aid NGOs consistently fail, but get back up and keep on trying. What makes EWB special is their stated focus on being critical and learning from past experience to optimize aid effectiveness. Although the failure report has a long way to come, it has a lot of potential for promoting learning and discussion. Just imagine if the federal government published one.
I would encourage present chapter members, people on the mailing list who don’t quite make it out, and even people annoyed or confused by EWB to attend a National Conference, and I challenge you to say your way of thinking and the lenses you perceive the world through hasn’t changed. I also challenge everyone to find George Roter and Parker Mitchell’s class picture in E3.
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