Translator: Ivana Korom Reviewer: Gustavo Trucco
I will be the anti manual
of what it is to give a talk.
I will confess something and open myself with you: I'm really very nervous.
Confessing this shouldn't be done in a talk.
But I don't do it just to be sincere or to make a catharsis with you, no…
it’s not the aim.
The purpose of this… something I have been noticing in other talks
and I thought it was interesting to highlight,
I see a lot of people starting business, and sometimes, what happens to me,
is that in that undertaking
one thinks that people are pretty confident of themselves,
and I think the entrepreneur is something different.
Is someone who, despite having fear, goes to the field to play.
I have a mechanism to describe the project where I am,
but I have not much mechanism to tell about me,
to set myself in first person,
and then I feel that all this time, I have been doing and doing and doing...
and at some point I lost sight of myself in this process.
So this that for you, might be a talk or perhaps a story, a tale,
for me is something else, it is a reunion with myself.
This story is common, it may seem exceptional,
but it is quite common.
It’s the story of many people who can be inside a single person.
Also a story of how those small parts, those small fragments of people,
regardless of sanity, insanity, the predictable, the inexplicable,
the order or disorder.
Always, always, like a kaleidoscope, finally manage to come together
in a harmonious whole that makes sense.
This story begins, for example, with a boy who has to decide on a profession,
and decides that this profession will have to do with teaching.
Sensing a bit, I think the key is the transformation,
decides to go towards pre-school education,
and also challenging family expectations because, I swear they believed
that a man had more conventional formats...
Finally I became a "Pre-school Teacher" (female)
or "kindergarten teacher" (in Argentina, some degrees have gender)
so I swear that my degree says: "Female teacher of pre-school education"
(Applause)
[Female teacher of Pre-school Education]
And you may wonder, Why pre-school level?
It really gave me the opportunity of being in touch
with a very creative moment in the development of the human being.
It is a moment of growth, where you learn and you also play.
I never wanted to stop playing, and in fact I never could stop playing,
it is a basic matter that I could never stop feeling.
As I liked this, that was soft, more emotional, more affective,
I also had a harder side,
with great curiosity for machinery.
Mechanical engineering was a good choice to graduate from
and to take to the field that curiosity.
I always felt that somehow
an engineer is someone who doesn’t stop playing
just like in kindergarten.
He always remains a child.
Finally, my family, after watching this picture,
because this photo circulated in the family,
could tell the world what I did for living.
"My son would become a Mechanical Engineer," finally I found my way.
And yet, something happened to me.
I always felt that I was living in two dimensions,
I could never settle down in one of the two,
and in this zigzagging way,
it was like building something between these two planes.
I felt that I was building a solid base,
more solid than if I had walked in only one of those two dimensions,
and whenever I looked back, I always, always, saw some different scenarios
because it was a whirlwind, I moved in two very different scenarios
starting by the fact one was full of women and the other one was full of men.
Then, when I looked back, what happened to is that I always saw people, humanity
I could not stop seeing that people…
Almost like a metaphor, I would say,
that in 2001, in one of the major crisis that took place in Argentina,
at least since I was born,
I think it was a crisis that broke through a generation,
which really made us vulnerable…
This happened in 2001.
I was in the library of the school studying,
and I remember that, in one of those breaks people make,
I looked through the window and saw a family eating food from the garbage.
All family members, from the oldest to the youngest.
I'm not saying I have never seen such scenes,
but that day I really saw it, I saw it deeply, roundly,
and I remember at that same moment I made myself a promise,
I made a pact with myself.
I had to do something, I did not know how, or when, or where,
but I had to do something!
I know I signed a promissory note on a very deep level,
it was very difficult for me to follow a long-term plan,
such as a university career while there is a reality
that is so demanding, so suffocating.
With this promise I could calm the impulse
that led me to go out and operate immediately
on that reality.
So, I came up with a first draft plan.
First I have to work as an engineer, generate economic livelihoods
and then generate a surplus, and with that surplus,
buy my time to finally devote myself to the social concerns that I may have.
This plan seemed to make sense,
maybe I was being naive but it did make sense to me…
So I put all my strength into it, all my strength...
And the first that did was "stop the pot",
then I became self-sustainable,
then I gained that small surplus
and meanwhile, there beside me, always walked that reality, always.
A reality that said: So? When?
Thankfully, that reality was walking by my side,
because if it was not,
I would have gotten distracted from that path.
I never could underestimate those forces
that tend to keep one in the comfort zones
that we create with time,
and I designed a new strategy that complemented the other one,
that naive strategy, and it was...
As I knew myself weak,
what I was going to do was to announce in every place
where my next start was headed.
I did that during years, always saying goodbye,
I could never stay anywhere,
I worked as a teacher, then as a researcher,
then as a project engineer, then I became an area manager
and in that last step, I finally felt
that I had accomplished with all social requirements.
I will finally be accepted…
And what does a man do when he manages to be what the world wants?
Well, I quit! It was ten years after the crisis.
Also ten years after that promise.
I had not, as here, a welcoming committee receiving me.
Neither had a job waiting for me after that quit,
even worse… I didn’t have a plan B!
I think the quitting was something necessary.
In my case it was absolutely necessary
because I needed to be free,
leave myself some time to explore,
to see how those two planes could merge,
those two worlds where I was moving.
The road I had traveled so far
had been rich, deeply formative,
above all things had been necessary,
absolutely necessary.
Without that road I wouldn’t have thought about these things.
By the time I had quit my previous job,
engineering was no longer that strong, solid base,
I expected in the first strategy.
Engineering had now transformed into something else.
It was a launch pad, something much more powerful.
Articulating these two worlds meant connecting
engineering and humanity.
This is how the idea of developing in Argentina
what in other countries is called "Engineers Without Borders" emerged.
I had set an internal deadline. The deadline was one year.
Why a year? Actually,
like so many other things I can’t really explain why.
I believe they are horizons a person makes up…
I know I said : "If I have to use some of my life time
to work on project that it will not work,
it should be reduced to at least one year
and as soon as possible."
And then I started this erratic search.
On the way I met a person interested in this idea,
the first person interested in this idea.
It was an anthropologist, she was not an engineer.
And she, as we were one and one, we were two,
she could have required me to call us
"Anthropologists Without Borders", it would've been correct.
At that time we still had no shape,
but fortunately she did not think of that, she didn't want it,
or she thinks it wasn't “cool” enough, I don´t know.
The point is that we returned to the inaugural idea of
"Engineers Without Borders."
The first thing we did was to expose us, make ourselves visible.
Just to attract other people with the same ideas,
and for this we used technology, we used social networks, and something happened.
Spontaneously and also immediately,
three small groups of people who were
trying to develop the same idea came up
and we had to stop being "Engineers Without Borders"
to become "Engineering Without Borders,"
precisely in order to be able to include
different genders, but also
to include the various trades and professions,
because we did not want a convention of engineers,
but instead we wanted to bring together an interdisciplinary group
to deal with the development, promotion, and implementation
of engineering projects with and for the most vulnerable.
Then the first project of "engineering without borders"
had to be to create it itself.
Did you see that sometimes certain ecological conditions are given
and some organizations begin to thrive?
Well this happened to us, we gathered
with one common passion, and we began to find ourselves in it.
And now I would like to return to this idea of the kaleidoscope,
because a fairly diverse group was formed.
When one looks at a kaleidoscope,
you look at the conjunction of those figures, shapes, colors, dispositions,
in that random way that’s formed
and you can never go back to that form,
you can go to another one, but not to the exact same one.
There is where the beauty lies,
and we definitely
had to preserve diversity, we could not leave it.
It was a value. And there came
one of the most important challenges
of the organization and most difficult to fulfil,
it was how, being so many of us engineer
that bring stability to chaos,
could we managed not to simplify the diversity of uniformity?
How to create a unit maintaining that tension
which produces diversity?
For this we had mainly to challenge ourselves as engineers.
Never believe that false idea that engineers are self sufficient,
that’s not true, we need the perspective of other people!
So we started to create an organization.
An organization that took day and night.
Let me go back a little bit,
back to that resignation, the time of that resignation,
and also, to that leap of faith.
About that free fall I have to tell you that it is a "sponge moment."
I think it is a dramatic moment where you incorporate skills,
knowledge, it is awesome. And about the fall down,
I can say that when there is a conviction,
emptiness is never empty.
It looks like empty before but it is never really empty.
The universe is slowly sewing a network
appears a quite suspicious synchronicity
that asks for more time, but as an exchange
you start getting closer to the most appropriate people for the project.
At this moment I have to stop talking about me
and start talking about us.
At first we did not know how to relate to the communities,
we did not have those tools from our own training,
not to do it respectfully at least.
What we do knew from our profession
was how to assemble projects, develop them, implement them,
we knew how to create solutions, closed solutions.
If they were "key in our hands", so much better
From our way to the communities,
and through social projects, we realized
we had to do exactly the opposite,
Open those solutions. The more open the better
and that anyone could sniff to see what's going on,
that anyone could understand or at least try to,
that anyone could participate.
A project that doesn't have the active participation of the locals,
For us it was a project that wouldn't not work.
We all sat at one table and spread our knowledge.
Each of us had to retrace the path
that had built up to that point, that process of education.
Today is May, 2013, it has already been
fifteen months of work, and a year has passed.
It was an arduous, authentic and challenging journey,
it was transforming, painful,
and above all things it was deeply moving.
Today we are 140 people actively working
on thirteen projects in five provinces of the country.
We are building bridges in remote rural areas
so that the tanker can have access,
to supply water but our projects also allow
those regional economies
that are survival economies to develop.
We are also developing productive projects
with persons deprived of their liberty, detained in prisons.
We are installing filters to remove arsenic from water
in some educational sites, very distant places.
We are installing a filter to treat
sewage to prevent groundwater from getting contaminated.
We are also building, for example,
a cultural center in a pretty vulnerable neighborhood
and we are doing it entirely with volunteer labor.
We are working with cooperatives,
but above all we are learning from them.
I go back and see... I see a guy who made ​​a promise
looking through a window on the university.
Today we are "Engineering Without Borders."
(Applause)