We Can Help

I always start this letter by thanking you for your continued interest and readership, and I sincerely mean it. I am, however, disappointed in the lack of responses that we have been getting and would like to ask that you take time to write to us with any concerns and opinions you may have on the articles or on the Journal itself. If you haven’t responded in the past, please consider sending us your comments.

It’s a shame that Warren Buffett isn’t a civil engineer because he just gave over thirty billion dollars to Bill and Melinda Gates’ charitable foundation. If he were a civil engineer, he might have been persuaded to contribute to the many causes supported by ASCE and the other organizations that represent our practice, as a great deal of very good work could be done with such a sizable amount of cash. But wait: we as engineers can still make major contributions to public service and charity by employing our professional talents. How can we do this? Well, we can serve in many different ways. Almost all professional organizations encourage this type of professional giving. For example, many medical organizations provide free health care for those who can’t afford it and even have programs that reach out overseas. Where am I going with this? Well one of the things I heard that Mr. Buffett’s money was slated for was a global fight against disease. The journalist interviewing Mr. Buffett’s representative asked what was being done and what could be done to make the fight successful. The representative’s response was interesting in that it addressed the medical aspect of fighting disease in impoverished countries by contributions to medical research to cure the prevalent diseases such as malaria, but it also mentioned one preventative measure that civil engineers have addressed since the dawn of mankind—clean drinking water. Not surprisingly, the representative indicated that this was probably the most important contribution that could be made in eliminating disease and poverty in the world, but also added that it has been the most difficult to accomplish. Here, my friends, is a real challenge for all of us as civil engineers if we wish to make a significant contribution to help others.

There are a number of quite dedicated civil engineering pro bono efforts that all of us can become involved in (one I’ve been following in particular is Engineers without Borders). I believe we all should look into such organized efforts with an idea that we can truly make a difference if we collectively focus on real-world problems. When I was in Vietnam serving as a lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, one of our greatest accomplishments was a program where we sent teams to remote villages and drilled water wells. You can’t imagine the joy our efforts brought to people who had lived all of their lives with limited sources of safe and adequate drinking water. Obviously there were many problems with being able to sustain a program like this, but we did our best and made a difference. Can we do this again? I challenge all of our Journal readers to write articles suggesting to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ways we can help them put Warren Buffett’s generous contribution to use by developing methods to bring safe and adequate drinking water supplies to the rest of the world. Do you have the expertise? Do you want to become involved in a program that can eliminate disease? Then please consider writing an article in a form we can publish and hopefully build on to develop a sustainable program directed at our goal. We don’t need to be all things to all people—we would only need to address this one issue of bringing drinking water to those who desperately need it. Having seen how important this is firsthand, I would encourage readers to use this Journal as an organizational forum in developing ideas and methods the civil engineering community can mobilize on to tackle the life-and-death matter of making clean drinking water available for our global community.

If you don’t agree with this opinion or would like to comment, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me or give me a call. You can also write feature articles for this publication or submit Forum material that you think would be worth sharing with our other readers.

I’m using the same quote I used in the April issue, as it seems most appropriate for this subject:

—Chinese Proverb

Your faithful servant, Chick Glagola, P.E.