I was very impressed with the purpose of Engineers without Borders and the commitment from their volunteers to the projects and communities they served. I heard about them when one of our favorite restaurants, Devotay, included Engineers without Borders on Devotay's Benefit Sunday schedule.
Engineers without Borders has 12,000 members with 350 projects in over 40 developing nations.
Each of those projects bring great benefits to communities around the world and to the members of of EWB-USA.
Each is a story that could inspire a broader audience of similar communities, prospective EWB members and small businesses.
Each one I read reminded me that many small businesses face similar challenges. Lack of access to talent, capital, healthcare, education, and the leaders and experts who could not only deliver an affordable and immediate solution but transfer their expertise to this business.
There is much to learn by startup businesses here in the US on bootstrapping and problem-solving, open-source and community-wide collaborative efforts, creating cultures of learning and leading, embracing diversity and find we all share a desire to make our families lives and the life of our communities better, stronger, more hopeful.
What if....Engineers without Borders:
Create and shared stories from each project as it progresses. These would be articles or blog posts with pictures and/or streaming media for each project.
Here are the storylines:
A. Volunteers: their skills, training, motivations, impressions, successes, failures, impact on their lives immediate and long-term. They could tag their page for location, schools, expertise, projects in the past. Note: That exists now. But I'm not sure if the search function pulls all that data.
B. Communities: where, lifestyle, cultures, religions, agriculture, business, ecology, resources . There is wealth of learning possibilities from the experience with each project/challenge in each community. Plus, they're fascinating to read. Members from the local community could share the ongoing story of what has improved since EWB-USA's visit.
The impact, long-term, is as valuable as the immediate solution and its benefits. Share the stories publicly. There are communities around the globe who would benefit from and maybe even add their experiences to the conversation.
C. Challenge: what was the challenge, what was the solution, what was the process. Share the challenge; share the process; share the solution.
Engineers have always proven to be strong writers. And the engineers in my extended family are both good writers and good photographers, too. But with a FLIP, anyone can take good, real, authentic first-person videos. ( Maybe FLIP would be a sponsor?)
The audience would be:
- EWB-USA members,
- Donors, sponsors
- NGO's
- Innovators, business leaders, entrepreneurs
- Educators
What if your business create a similar program?
What if you started internally?
Create a site where project stakeholders could share their skills, their challenges and solutions and process to move from one to the other? Share them openly so a learning environment is created. Now you have a culture of learning, lead by a culture of learners. And a culture of learners is a culture of leaders, says Gary Harpst.
You could create opportunities for volunteers to invest their IC, intellectual capital, in a project. Or pull IC from a previous project.
You would find stories of success and perseverance. Heroes could be found and recognized among those stories. Maybe, they would be found daily.
An easy resource to recognize members, formally and informally, would be created.
Sure, there are risks. Not every corporate culture is one where learning and helping can be shared openly. Your choice then is to maintain and defend that culture and its below average ROE, growth, cash-flows, operating profits, etc., or change that culture to a culture of learners, a culture of engagement, where the stories can be shared with a wider audience of investors of financial capital and intellectual capital.
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