We are within weeks of our trip to Haiti. We have made tremendous strides in putting together a nonprofit engineering organization that is devoted to helping the Haitian people address their infrastructure needs.
As noted in our previous post, word is spreading about our efforts and we find ourselves in no short supply of talented professionals willing to lend their time and expertise.
We would like to welcome several new team members on board.
- Louis Gary Lissade, Attorney and CEO - Cabinet Lissade, Former Haiti Minister of Justice, will represent Haiti Engineering, INC, who was just recently in the news worldwide for representing American missionaries jailed in Haiti. He is a well respected lawyer throughout the world.
- Steve Price, PE, A Professional Engineer in the State of California. He is currently the Deputy District Director of Maintenance and Operations in District 5 for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Mr. Price is responsible for the Maintenance and Operations of the California State Highway system in the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.
- James Lawrence, PE - Environmental Resources Engineer. Mr. Lawrence is
currently working as Fuel Manager for the California Department of Transportation. Mr. Lawrence will be our Database Specialist.
- Sonny Fong, (Special Advisor to Haiti Engineering) Emergency Preparedness and Security Manager, Construction Management, Emergency Management, currently working for the California Department of Water Resources.
- Derial W. Bivens, CEMP, COML
Certified Emergency Management Professional
FEMA Certified Communications Unit Leader, Level III, Senior Partner with Shaw/Bivens EM Consulting of Beloit, WI.
Haiti is inundated with non government organizations (NGO’s) that are addressing the hunger issue in Haiti. It is our goal to not follow the framework set up by most of those NGO’s. It is not sustainable and indebts the Haitian people to those organizations for generations to come, without any true solutions to the problem. Will those same NGO’s be there feeding the people a hundred years from now, or do they have plans to help the Haitian people be self sufficient in time?
There’s a Confucius proverb that says “Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day .. teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime” This is the approach that Haiti Engineering, INC (HE) hopes to foster, a collaborative environment where both parties , HE and Haitian Engineers and Architects, work together to address the infrastructure problems in Haiti.
In closing, we’ve been asked if the lessons learned in creating HE be applied to other areas around the world that may face similar challenges due to natural disasters and would HE be willing to help in other parts of the world? The answer to both questions is yes. If we continue to find dedicated professionals willing to help, then expanding our efforts beyond Haiti would be a natural progression. HE’s logo says “ It’s one world, Let’s build it together!” - how true a statement if we go beyond Haiti’s borders, and what a legacy to the 300,000 plus that have died in Haiti from the January 2010 earthquake, then an engineering nonprofit organization dedicated to responding to disasters worldwide.
~Haiti Engineering STAFF~
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