Building Back Better

Former Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis recently told a conference audience that in 2008, when the government was planning recovery efforts following a series of hurricanes and floods, she could not find a single engineer qualified to oversee the task of rebuilding the country’s destroyed bridges that connect Haitians to supplies, healthcare, and schools. Thanks to HELP and our great partners, this is now changing.This past August, HELP engineering students James Paul and Stanley Clermont were selected to complete their senior thesis projects at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VT) in Blacksburg, VA. This was made possible thanks to some hard work by a VT team led by accounting professor Dr. Brian Cloyd and a generous grant from the Foundations to Promote Open Society. The grant was designed to ensure that HELP’s fourth- and fifth-year students would complete their final year of university, in spite of the disruption of the academic year and forced extension of their degree program due to the earthquake. At VT, James and Stanley had the opportunity to sit in on classes, work with VT faculty and students, and to take advantage of the school’s state-of-the-art labs and facilities. James’s thesis project focused on designing and building suspension bridges, under the direction of Dr. Carin Roberts Wolmann.As part of his project, James teamed up with VT’s chapter of Bridges to Prosperity, an organization that builds bridges in isolated rural communities. The VT group designed and built a footbridge in Ti-Peligre in Haiti’s Central Plateau, where heavy rains make the town inaccessible for six months of the year, isolating residents from medical care, the region’s central marketplace, and schools offering classes beyond fourth grade. After finishing his thesis in December, James returned to Haiti and worked on the ground in Ti-Peligre. James had done experiments with various cement mixes at VT and so he became the person responsible for making sure the construction supervisor followed engineering specifications on the bridge. In January, the VT team left Haiti to return to school and James was the only engineer on site; the project was completed under his supervision in February. Professor Cloyd said that James was a “lynchpin for communication and supervision” for the project.“It was a great experience for me,” says James. “It is really exciting to see something on paper become reality. Now, I am more efficient in planning and managing a jobsite.” James tells us that the Ti-Peligre bridge is the first suspended footbridge in all of Haiti. James is now talking about establishing a chapter of Bridges to Prosperity at Quisqueya University and Bridges to Prosperity is looking at ways they can continue to benefit from James’s newfound expertise for three additional bridges they are planning to build in the region.Today, HELP supports 33 engineering students. Thanks to you, the expertise required for these and other important projects is now homegrown and will be accessible for decades to come. This is true sustainability.Click here to see a slideshow of the Bridges to Prosperity project.