I would like to begin this blog post by thanking Professor Tapia for setting up this opportunity and also for getting us pizza and drinks before the class began. That was a great beginning to the class and we had an awesome introduction for Andrew Alspach. At the beginning of class before the lecture began we had individual discussions with the speaker to find more about his background. It just so happens that he is an Ohio State fan, which was kind of a downside. We quickly got over this fact when he began telling us his life story and all of the different places that he has worked over the years. He grew up on the farm during his younger years as a bee keeper, which surprisingly gave him a reason to get into the Peace Corps. Following this, he eventually became a permanent member in the United Nations and more specifically OCHA. Following this, we went around the room and some of the class introduced themselves and why they are taking this class and major. I believe that this as a great way to get the speaker acclimated to the class and to get us acclimated to him as well for the actual lecture.
I would have to say that one of the main focuses of the speaker was his work in Haiti and different types of technologies used there. I thought this was pretty interesting considering we have been covering this topic for the last three weeks in class. He spoke of the reading Disaster Relief 2.0 describing the events in Haiti and how the events woke up the people in the United Nations. This was cool because we earlier read this reading for class a few weeks ago and this reinforced the topics of tonight’s lecture. Another topic that I enjoyed was innovation. Andrew played a video on innovation that basically explained that if people open up their minds and share ideas, the better ideas come out in order to form breakthroughs. This reinforced topics that had also been previously discussed in class in some of the past weeks. Haiti was a prime example of people from different organizations coming together to solve a common problem. Many new technologies were invented and implemented through civilians using their expert skills for the better of mankind and to help one another in times of crisis. The last thing that sparked my interest during the discussion was Relief Web. This is a website that is very good for finding crisis relief jobs and other careers of that sort.
I thought that this class this evening was very interesting and productive. I learned a lot of new topics and Andrew reinforced a lot of older topics and made them clearer to me. Following the presentation I found an interesting video on the United Nations and how they helped to cope with the earthquake in general. The You Tube clip is titled UN Copes with Haiti Earthquake and can be found at the following link below:
Andrew Alspach’s life story was very interesting on how he arrived at his current position at UN’s OCHA. I found the story of how he started in the Peace Corps to be an ironic story. Growing up in Ohio on a farm as the beekeeper was the exact way he got into the Peace Corps, very cool. Just because you don’t have a college degree doesn’t mean you cannot be successful in this world. It is just how you get to being successful that might be tough. He eventually went to college to receive his bachelors and masters degrees. He seemed to have a specialty in GIS which is cool because I have been doing a lot lately with ESRIs ArcGIS’ ArcMap.
ReplyDeleteI found it very interesting that he did a development project in Central America with a water reservoir making sure trees would grow around a certain area. I found that the 10 year period to see a drastic different in the environment was how people should look at natural disasters this way. I believe when disaster strikes the humanitarian aid organizations (NGOs and UN) should think long term, what can we do that will help the people in need now but also 5 and 10 years down the road.
This is probably the hardest part for NGOs, to think of the long term issues that might occur from a natural disaster. It has me thinking that you need a multi-discipline problem that NGOs need to realize, especially the UN. I feel that the UN is stuck in the past and needs to progress forward especially when it comes to technology.
Mr. Alspach certainly was an interesting character and his background is certainly of note - he exemplifies a unique background that I certainly never would have guessed would lead a person to working as an influential member of the UN OCHA. His focus on Relief Web was also interesting, as he clearly was suggesting that students in the class should be looking down the humanitarian path for career opportunities. I also appreciated the effort he put into further breaking down and explaining the Disaster Relief 2.0 document, though I feel he could have gone into much greater depth about the hard topics.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, Mr. Alspach admitted to many failings within the UN OCHA and expressed his disappointment with the staggeringly slow adoption of technology within the organization, yet failed to suggest any solutions or imply that they were putting the necessary resources into changing the attitudes and protocols that cause the sluggish integration of technology.
Overall, I agree that this was certainly an informative and interesting presentation and we were lucky to have this opportunity to pick at one of the minds behind OCHA.