“Why Can’t You Help People Here?” — Finally Getting to it, Dad.
From an early age, I’ve had the desire to use my skills to help whenever possible. My mother credited me with teaching my sister the alphabet before she went to preschool. I had a chalkboard in my bedroom and sat her down next to a lineup of my stuffed animals. She’s a technical writer today. While it’d be overstepping to say I “gave her her start”, I do know her classmate, Bear is still very well read.
Combining my proclivity for math and science with the innate need to be useful, I applied to engineering schools. At the University of Virginia, I was on a career path that would allow me to really do some good in this world. Then joining the Peace Corps afforded me the opportunity to learn more about engineering in a global development setting. When I left for Mali, my father asked me “why can’t you help people here?” I responded “I’ll get to it, Dad” — it wasn’t a brush off, I meant it. During my volunteer tenure, the spark of passion for service and the water sector exploded.
Upon returning home, I was naively surprised to see how much work there is right in my backyard. In the U.S., we cannot be blind to the fact that our public works are not supporting everyone’s needs. Now at AWWA, I manage a program that sends volunteer engineers to the American communities that need them most. I’m empowered to leverage others’ expertise in an effort to improve nationwide civil infrastructure.
There are many things I will never forget from my experience as an engineer with the Peace Corps. Paramount among these lessons, it was in Mali that I began to truly appreciate the value of water how it is valued in other cultures. Ideally, it should be easy to establish the relationship between clean water and good health. In my service, I quickly discovered conveying this message was easier said than done.
Having completed a well improvement project, the village Water and Sanitation Committee held a debrief meeting. The discussion during this meeting defined my volunteer service. I asked, “what changes have you seen take place?” One woman commented frankly, “I spend less money on medicine for my children”, and the others nodded in agreement. The connection had been made. Clean water means better health, which puts money back in the bank.
I closed my service 6 years ago, and these lessons have served as a common thread throughout my career. Perhaps most significantly, I’m able to use my experiences from Mali to better serve AWWA volunteers through the Community Engineering Corps. The communities that request technical assistance through this program parallel the village in Mali in many ways. While the perceived value of water may vary, both understand what water means to their daily life. My job as a water professional also remains the same: work with the communities I serve to understand their priorities then serve as an advocate for the value of water.
