Building the Kingdom

I have just returned from Haiti where Josh Ayers, our Latin America office Disaster Response Coordinator, and I co-led a stellar group of EMI volunteers – a surveyor and three Civil Engineers.  In 27 years of leadership I have never led a more professional and spiritually mature team of men and women.  Our mission was Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).  Our client ministry was World Concern-Haiti.  We assessed the effects of river-erosion, coastal-erosion, and stormwater flooding and provided multiple technical options to mitigate the effects that these hazards are having on two communities in NW Haiti.  We developed recommendations with WC local engineers, who demonstrated the professional competence to design the solutions community leaders adopt.  As we departed, WC country director, Pierre said, “You have built the Kingdom here”.  Never before have I received such a compliment.  So honored am I to serve with Engineering Ministries International.

In this season of fiscal austerity, DRR is even more important due to its tenfold return on investment compared to Disaster Response.  DRR activities include prevention, mitigation, and preparation; sustainable DRR depends on community empowerment.  With our ministry partner Food for the Hungry, EMI developed this helpful DRR formula:  Risk = (Hazard x Vulnerability) / Coping Capacity; thus risk reduction requires the combination of technical interventions (10%) to reduce vulnerability and social interventions (90%) to increase community resiliency to the effects of their most likely hazards.