Engineers aim to bring about small changes with global impact

by Melinda Dalton, The Record
November 17, 2006

Even before he traveled to Zambia, George Roter knew more than most just how interconnected the world was.

But during the trip, he experienced a defining moment that cemented the notion.

As he was walking through a village market, he spotted a child in one of the stalls wearing a shirt with the University of Waterloo logo emblazoned on it.

"The first thing that came to mind was, 'How did this shirt, which may well have been my own shirt at one point, come to exist in a market in Zambia?' " he said.

"That's when I really started to understand these connections we all have in this world."

With that realization comes responsibility, Roter said, not just on a political or corporate level, but on a personal level.

The public's outcry against corporate sweatshops in the mid-1990s forced companies such as The Gap and Nike to look at their own social responsibilities and change their practices, he said.

Even companies such as Shell now sell fair-trade coffee in their gas stations, because the demand for equitable products is there.

"They're doing it because it makes sense to them from a dollars perspective (but) that change came from public influence," he said. "You need to look at: Where can I have influence and where can I make a difference?"

Roter's presentation this week at the Centre for International Governance Innovation was the first in a series of public talks offered by the Waterloo Professional Chapter of Engineers without Borders.

Roter co-founded the group with Parker Mitchell in 2000 after graduating with an engineering degree from UW.

Initially a student-fuelled organization, the organization now has six professional chapters, including the newly formed group in Waterloo.

"We found we had all these people who were involved in university who were still interested in the work once they left," said chapter member Jeff Smith. "We're hoping these talks will promote awareness of our organization and open it up to a new audience outside the university community."

The free talk proved a popular starting point for the chapter -- more than 100 people squeezed into the second- floor room, some sitting on the floor.

"All of us sitting in this room have won the only lottery in life that really counts," Roter told the crowd. "We were born in Canada or to parents who were able to bring us here."

In his talk titled International Development: How Can I Have an Impact?, Roter acknowledged that bringing about change in developing countries can be tough and so-called "silver- bullet" solutions do nothing but mask the problem.

"You need to change behaviours," he said, noting how the introduction of conservation farming in Zambia has helped communities sustain crops.

"One of the primary challenges of getting the right things done well is improving things on the ground."

Even with all the things Western countries could be doing but simply aren't trying to do, sustainable progress is being made in some of the most impoverished countries, he said.

The number of children attending school in Tanzania has grown by nearly 40 per cent since 2000. The number of children who die at birth is dropping in Ghana and communities are learning from, and adapting to aid from, groups on the ground.

Roter saw this first-hand when he came across a village in Ghana with a grove of carefully tended mango trees.

"They told me they were growing organic mangoes for export," he said. "It's amazing to see these communities who are being inventive and saying 'We are going to drive our development forward.' "

The new chapter will continue its public series of talks next year, with its next event scheduled for Jan. 24.