A few months after my epiphany in the jungle, I was looking around for the right opportunity to put my idea to leverage my professional skills for social good into action.
I was honoured to be offered the opportunity to help out with Waste for Life as a volunteer Project Manager. I was to help implement what Eric Feinblatt and Caroline Baillie, the project’s co-founders had designed and developed. Check out their website http://wasteforlife.org/ for notes on their journey. It’s amazing what strong ideals and determination can accomplish.
Recycling, co-operativism and poverty reduction
Waste for Life as a whole seeks to ‘develop poverty-reducing solutions to specific ecological problems’, through collaboration amongst educators, co-operatives, students and professionals. My contribution to the project would involve overseeing the implementation of a simple Hotpress to a recycling co-operative on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina. From my Jan 2012 article in the Professional Engineers Ontario’s Engineering Dimensions Magazine:
“As a volunteer project manager for educational non-profit organization Waste for Life, Erica Lee oversaw the implementation of a simple manufacturing process in a recycling co-operative in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The project’s most important deliverables were non-technical: social inclusion, democratization of knowledge, and access to the
ability to alleviate poverty through strategic use of technology and entrepreneurship.”
A few months after giving them my ‘yes’, I was on a plane to Buenos Aires to check things out. In the end I spent 5.5 months on the ground in Argentina, overseeing the delivery of the press to the co-operative, developing relationships with sellers, designing a manufacturing process, designing and implementing the business process (from product design to manufacturing to selling and managing the income), but most importantly, preparing the local team and project members for entrepreneurship.
For a more detailed explanation of my time on the project, check out the entire article Engineering for social inclusion in Buenos Aires.
I am extremely proud to say that, less than 2 months after the press was delivered to the co-operative (which was March 18 2010), the team sold their first products at a ritzy design fair in Buenos Aires. Then they secured a contract with the local municipality to make garbage cans for the conversation areas. This week they are prototyping a new product, and Waste for Life has plans to expand to include other co-operatives.
While I am proud of my track record saving millions of dollars for companies by helping them systematically identify sources of waste and non-value-added activity, the personal satisfaction I derived from providing the opportunity for these people to transform their lives made it without question the best experience of my career to date. I also learned so much, and I look forward to the chance to further explore themes of local economic development, entrepreneurship and social enterprise. Great things are possible when people put their heads and hearts together!