7 March, 2013
Global Change Agent George Roter a Keynote at CES Toronto 2013
The Engineers Without Borders’ co-founder and CEO is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at this year’s evaluation conference.
Intelligent development. That’s how Engineers Without Borders (EWB) views its social change programs that are working to accelerate rural African development. According to a February 2013 article in Forbes magazine, EWB’s CEO and co-founder George Roter has revolutionized engineering in Canada and built a global system-changing network supported by more than 45,000 engineers, volunteers, staff and entrepreneurs from all over the world that is impacting the lives of more than 2.5 million people in Africa.
A New Way
George Roter believes in a new way of looking at issues. Inspired originally by the extreme poverty of people in Zambia and Malawi, Roter decided to address the problem at its root and find a way to resolve some of its manifestations, such as the absence of clean water. This led to the creation of EWB, whose purpose is to create opportunities and training for rural Africans that will result in the next generation having more favorable conditions for change and prosperity.. Roter previously spoke on redefining poverty at the third annual TEDxToronto conference in September of 2011.
Inspiring Change
Through EWB, Roter inspires an ever-growing network of leaders who are dedicated to making disruptive, positive change. He has been recognized as an Ashoka Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship (2012), was awarded the Young Leaders Award by the Public Policy Forum (2007), named as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (2005) and awarded an Action Canada Fellowship (2004) on public policy. Roter was also recognized by Time magazine as one of Canada’s next generation of social leaders (2001).
Transforming How We Work
Transparency and accountability are key to EWB’s culture. Speaking publicly about setbacks in their groundbreaking Failure Report, EWB is leading the way in creating a culture that openly discusses and critically learns from failures. Roter is looking forward to addressing the CES 2013 Toronto. “We have a huge opportunity for us to start thinking about evaluation as completely integrated with learning, with discovery, and with iteration,” says Roter. “If we do this, evaluation will not just be an exercise in accountability and report writing, but will truly unlock the potential of practitioners to deliver great work, and the potential of projects to be truly transformative.”
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