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| GVE News and Notes | ||
| A Newsletter for Friends of Global Village Engineers | Vol.4 No.1 Winter 2005 |
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Featured GVE Partner Geoff Herzog Country Director, El Salvador Voices on the Border Born in New York City in 1964, Geoff has worked in El Salvador and Latin America since 1985 at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey when he joined the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Concerned about local issues such as homelessness, he continued his work in El Salvador to contribute to change for social justice upon graduation. In 1997, Geoff began to focus his work solely in El Salvador and in 2000 began working with Voices on the Border to promote community empowerment for integral development. Since that time Geoff has collaborated with GVE on a variety of projects in El Salvador. "My personal experience, the vision of Voices and the mission of GVE all share the common denominator of giving tools to communities, empowering them to have greater capacity for lobbying, and influencing authorities presently, in order to concretely favor those same communities in the future. Our work together, specifically in the lower Lempa has been a pivotal component of developing greater confidence in local leaders and abilities to negotiate and when necessary confront authorities based on a technical understanding of the levee which GVE has facilitated. Now, community members are not only working on maintenance of the sections of levee already built and on the conclusion of the pending sections, they understand what improvements that they can seek for greater stability in the new sections of levee yet to be built. Without Global Village Engineers this just wouldn't have been possible." Voices On The Border |
To Our Volunteers, Friends, and Supporters: Welcome to our winter/spring newsletter! The statistics on world poverty are frightening yet this is hardly something new. But poverty is not only a lack of wealth in monetary terms; it also implies the denial of various choices and opportunities basic to human development, something many of us take for granted or consider a right. These opportunities include the ability to enjoy a long, creative, and healthy life; to acquire knowledge; to have freedom, dignity, self-respect, and respect for others; and to have uninhibited access to the resources needed to live a decent life. Infrastructure is a key opportunity to alleviating poverty - and thus engineers, the architects of infrastructure, have an essential role to play. Without ready access to clean water and sanitation, productivity is severely reduced through illness and time spent in water collection. Without roads, the poverty fosters because the bearer of its burden is unable to sell their goods at market. Basic infrastructure is not a luxury that can wait for better economic times or political wills to change, but as precondition for creating better times for both rich and poor, and its provision is an urgent and ongoing requirement. The Economist stated that over the past 50 years rich nations have given US$1 trillion in aid to poor ones. However, this considerable sum has failed to improve the lives of its intended beneficiaries. Poor countries that receive lots of aid do no better, on average, than those that receive very little. Poverty is thus not being ignored, but alleviation strategies don't appear consistent with the reality for effective relief to be achieved. We hear of these failures in strategy everyday (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan). The question is what we do about them. It's not up to someone else. The engineering community, yes YOU, has more to offer toward poverty alleviation than all the worlds governments combined. It's not the details of the contract... it's your mind and heart that matter. Trust life, trust yourself and we just might find ourselves living in a much more hospitable world, one engineered to last. Best Wishes, 
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| Project Update - Lower Lempa, El Salvador |
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On February 3-4, 2005, GVE volunteers Mat Brener and Chris Busch and Geoff Herzog, Country Director for Voices on the Border, visited the United Communities of the Lower Lempa in El Salvador. The trip was a tremendous success and was focused on continued work with communities in Lower Lempa affected by annual flooding. The main objectives of the visit were to consolidate ongoing community maintenance of the levee, to promote more systematic inspections of the levee, and to continue communication exchanges with the communities. Over 35 members from 18 communities participated with GVE. Together, they reviewed the status of nearly half of the approximate 14.85 kilometers constructed. In the follow up meeting, The second half of the meeting was an open discussion around the improved structuring of maintenance and inspection teams and the collective development of a reporting form around levee conditions that will be centralized, compiled and distributed to the Ministry of Agriculture (government agency responsible for levee construction), GVE, local police, City Hall and others. 
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GVE volunteers reviewed basic levee construction and provided suggestions on maintenance concerns. GVE volunteers applauded community maintenance done so far, including the stone paving of ramps by communities themselves on their own initiative.| Project Update - Santa Tecla, El Salvador |
During the same February 2005 trip to El Salvador, GVE volunteers Mat Brener and Chris Busch took time to make a follow-up visit with our community partners in Santa Tecla. |
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