Engineers asked to support disaster relief program

A wave of generosity swept engineers attending the Association of Consulting Engineers annual conference. The event was held June 27-29 at the Manoir Richelieu resort beside the St. Lawrence River in the glorious Charlevois region of Quebec.
When they heard about the Career Awareness Project at a luncheon presentation on the Friday. one by one people spontaneously rose from their seats to promise financial support to pay for laptop computers. They were inspired by project manager Robyn Osgood who has been hired to take charge of the program which is intended to appeal to school and college students. Using the motto, “Generation E: Attracting Tomorrow’s Engineers,” they have come up with a colourful graphics package that sports a zany, well proportioned female cartoon figure intended to suggest that engineering is far from dull and dreary.
When Dave Chalcroft, P.Eng. and Marie Lemay, P.Eng. spoke the next morning about RedR Canada, they were hoping to generate some of the same charitable fervour. Chalcroft of UMA in Calgary is ACEC’s representative for RedR Canada, which works with organizations like the Red Cross and sends engineers overseas to help out in disaster relief. Lemay is head of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers in Ottawa, which is also promoting the program.
Lemay said they have been disappointed with how slowly RedR has taken off in Canada. Britain, where RedR was begun in the late 1990s, has 1,500 accredited individual engineers registered to volunteer their services, and it manages to responds to about 200-300 requests per year. The Canadian charity was incorported last year. The initial goal is to raise $150,000 in corporate donations. So far they have raised $60,000 and will use this to recruit an executive director and start setting up the organization here.