Since it is a Competition, What Are We Playing For?

I've been stressing that "It's All About the People" in any project like the Community Plumbing Challenge.  The community that you have a bird's eye view of above, and the kids you see here are truly where our hearts have to be to have this all come together with the power that we know it can have, but--It Is Also A Competition, Right?

Yes.  There are competitive elements to the CPC.  One of the unique elements is that this event is BOTH competitive and collaborative.  This year:

"Based on feedback from the 2015 event in Nashik, India, for the 2016 event in Diepsloot we are proposing that Teams will contest a range of awards that recognise various technical tasks and creative aspects of the Brief, rather than following an assessment scheme that identifies a single ‘winner’. 

These awards will be presented by various stakeholders/groups involved in the project, and may include (but are not limited to):

 • Sanitation Studio Award (best Team engagement, best Team to work with), presented by WASSUP. 

• People’s Choice Award (a public vote, ongoing throughout the week, presented to a favourite Team or individual) presented by DACN

 • Healthy Living Environment Award (best architectural approach considering the 9 Healthy Living Principles) presented by Healthabitat. 

• Sustainable Design Award (best use of software and ITC resources) presented by Autodesk.

• Plumbing Prize (best application of Plumbing in the event) presented by IAPMO/World Plumbing Council. 

Finally, an award for the best performing new units installed after approx. 2 months trial in Diepsloot (mid-July to mid-Sept) will be announced at the World Plumbing Conference in Cape Town between 14–15 Sept, 2016." (CPC2016 Information Packet)

We tend to be a competitive bunch.  However, I think this set of "awards" appears to stress relationships, skills for living in community, and sustainability.....and that really is about us as people.

Who Do You Play For?

                            Who Do You Play For? 

For those of you who are still getting to know me, our son, Christopher, was a hockey goalie from the age of five through the end of his first year of Juniors hockey, when he lived away from home, rode the bus, spent a lot of time we weren't supposed to know about driving to northern Minnesota to see his girlfriend, and finishing high school online.  As anyone who has had a child with a career will know, this has lots of ramifications for your entire family. We were no exception.  

One of the results of this lifestyle was an ever-present. low level of stress, that you don't even realize is there until you don't live with it anymore.  We all have funny ways of dealing with stress.  Doug and I used to know if there was a high level of child stress (either hockey-centered or not) if we went downstairs at night and found our two younger kids asleep on the floor in front of he television, watching the movie Miracle on repeat.  You wear out a lot of DVDs this way.

Bear with me.  I am going to share.

So, why this?  Why now?  First, there certainly is stress involved in getting the final submission in, thinking about the logistics of traveling half way around the world with a lot of people and a lot of stuff, and trying to get us all prepared for some of the cultural things we have talked abut here.  I could use a night of subliminal Miracle.

Beyond that, Who Do You Play For?  We tried out for a lot of teams over the years, and one of the toughest things to deal with, on and off the ice, I think, was transitioning to new teams and new families that we all might have had rather ambivalent relationships with before. Who Do You Play For?  and How Do We Do It?

I have been thinking about this a lot as we have been working on getting our submission done, trying to work out who is responsible for what, and trying to nudge us toward the next phase of the CPC.  (There is a lot of work to be done in the next two weeks--it isn't vacation, folks.)

As with most teams, we have multiple loyalties, coaches and owners.  A lot of time, money, and work has gone in to getting us this far.  I'd like to re-focus us at this point.  Who Do You Play For?

First, most importantly, we will only do good work if we play for these little guys:

Next, we have people we are indebted to in more ways than one.  Whose names are literally and figuratively on the back of our shirts?

Let's Meet Judy, One of Our Team USA Alums!

Let's Meet Judy, One Of Our Team USA Young Leaders!

One of the missions of programs like the CPC is to develop future leadership in the plumbing field. As our current industry professionals at all levels (hands on plumbing through engineering and administration) move closer to retirement we have an increasing need to grow young professionals with solid technical skills, critical thinking and communication skills to help them participate actively in the industry, and a cultural awareness.  The CPC, even at this fairly early stage in its development, has this as a goal.

Today we would like to tell you about one of our own--a participant-leader who has grown up with the CPC.

Judy Torres is a young leader who is a product of the leadership development activities of the CPC.  Judy is no stranger to many who are reading this blog.  She grew up in Chicago and after high school she attended the Milwaukee School of Engineering in the Architectural Engineering program. Doug had the honor of working with Judy as she completed her senior design sequence of courses. After graduation, Judy went to work for Progressive AE based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as a Mechanical Building Systems engineer specializing in plumbing.

Shortly after graduation, Judy responded to an article from ASPE and was selected for the inaugural Team USA. She became the leader of that team and had great success in Singapore with what was truly a competition. If you haven't seen video of all four team members running with pails of water, it is quite a sight. After this competition, Judy represented her company, Team USA, and the industry, well by doing several talk show appearances and speaking engagements.  We knew that Judy was not done.

Last year Judy was a coach for Team USA in India. Her role in preparing the team through review of written reports and drawings was crucial to the team's success. It was her that coined the term "Team School 125.”

This year Judy continues to be a critical member of Team USA's coaching team. Unfortunately, due to travel restrictions and a career move back to Chicago,, she will not be traveling to Deepsloot. We are sure that she is still not done.  Judy is currently workiing as a Plumbing Project Engineer at DBHMS in Chicago.

In previous posts we have highlighted the importance of our sponsors’ support to the industry. Judy is a great example of how that support can result in both personal and professional growth for one person, and ultimately for the industry as a whole.

She is a great role model for this year's, and future teams!

Being Good Citizens of the World

I may have made some of us uneasy yesterday, calling us potential Elephants.  As I said yesterday, the moment you stop and think about who we are/what our cultural attitudes are/how we feel about that is moment that change happens.  It's what we do after that moment that is important.

I have been told that Americans are unusual in needing to do cultural consciousness-raising.  I have thought about that a lot, and I do not think that is true--as a general rule and also, in particular, for this type of program.  I think the cultural issues are different for people from different parts of the world, but no one is exempt from needing to use discernment about how we interact with those around us.

As a quick personal aside, I used to work with international students quite a bit, and some were wonderful and walked through the world with a spirit of lightness and acceptance.  Some struggled and had a difficult times themselves which spread that unease to those around them.  So, in other words, they were human, like the rest of us.

The Community Plumbing Challenge has a goal of giving young professionals the opportunity"to contribute to improvements to public health in regions where communities are still threatened by a lack of basic sanitation and safe drinking water systems."  (IAPMO Website) For me, the next sentence is what makes this event unusual:

"Attitudes will not necessarily change because of targets, health surveys, or editorials and opinions in newspapers, which all too often preach only to the converted. Rather, it is the actions of professionals working in the areas of health and sanitation which will demonstrate to the community how best to build local services, and will educate local communities about the benefits of such an approach."



Actions, modeling, relationships and education put this into a very different category than Elephant tromping on his friend Mouse!  Putting this front and center in the goals for this event make it much more than a plumbing competition--it is a professional leadership opportunity--or at least that's what we want for Team USA.

So, how do we do this?

We prepare before we go--this is technical preparation and brainstorming, but it also comes from some of the work I highlighted yesterday.  We go with our eyes open.

We read and build up a skill base about cultural competency.  I am not sure that it matters what we read as long as we get started.  Last year I shared a wonderful blog with our group the week before we left for India.  It's called Smart Conversations:  Demystifying Microaggressions at Alaska Natives https://nalliq.com/2015/10/22/smart-conversations-demystifying-microagressions-at-alaska-natives/   and I think it is a wonderful place to start.  (In case any of you ever have he chance to look at who reads this blog, but I have a small but intense Alaskan readership along the Bering Sea, after spending part of three summers in the Yupik villages there.)

I strongly suggest reading it, but to give the short version, one of the themes of the article is being alert and careful to how we ask questions when we meet friends in new places.  thinking before we ask and listening more than talking will get the world a long way!

Enough for today!  Thank you to each of you for all that you do for Team USA and this big world.

SMART CONVERSATIONS: DEMYSTIFYING MICROAGRESSIONS AT ALASKA NATIVES

It's All About The People

So far this blog tells  you a lot about our team and about our sponsors. Now that you have some familiarity with who we are, I would like to fill you in on some of why we do things the way we do...the philosophy behind Team USA. This is also where I will share a little with you about why I do what I do for this project.

First of all, I'd like to ground all of what we do on the words of Paul Pholeros, who said in a 2013, "People are not the problem. We've never found that. The problem [is] poor living environment, poor housing, and the bugs that do people harm. None of those are limited by geography, by skin colour or by religion. None of them. The common link between all the work we've had to do is one thing and that's poverty."  

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_pholeros_how_to_reduce_poverty_fix_homes?language=en 

I would add to this that poverty looks very much the same whether we look at Detroit, Los Angles, rural Arkansas, Milwaukee, Nashik, or Diepsloot, Part of the early work we did with our team was to read about Diepsloot and watch some You-Tube videos (some that I would recommend and some that I wouldn't, but all to stir conversation and thought!) We all wrote responses to this material and shared it with each other. Each individual response echoed two points:

1.  This looks so different from what I am used to--how can I make sense of this world based on what we would call it/think of it here. 

2.  These people have the same concerns as we do. As one of us said, "the difference that “my eyes” see now after India, is that these folks are doing the best they can with what they have. They work with the jobs they have, they take care of their families the best they can, and they keep trying to move forward under the condition that are presented to them….And in reality, isn’t that what we all do?

This is the moment when change starts.  

We all come to the Community Plumbing Challenge with different experiences and different specialties, but somewhere, underneath, whether we are engineers, teachers, legislative or business professionals, or higher ed folks, we are all concerned with the crucial question or how to alleviate poverty and improve the health of the world, one person and one community at a time.  This year we will do part of this work in Diepsloot, but we come home and do our part in the US when we pay attention to proper code enforcement, quality design of plumbing systems, health education, and access to life-long education and socio-economic change.  

The second grounding principle that we come back to over and over can also be said in Paul's words: "Change comes slowly...The work must be built around people -those doing the work and those who we are working with."(Healthhabitat webpage) For many of us, this is both the most exciting and the most scary prospect we face when we go out to do work like the CPC.

There are mountaintop moments when change comes in the blink of an eye--sometimes just in the way someone suddenly puts something into words in a way that resonates with everyone and give new meaning to everything that comes afterwords.  I would say that Judy Torres' statement that "We are Team School 125" was one of those moments last year. (More about Judy and about leadership development through the CPC next week.)  

But most of the time we, and change, creep along. And sometimes we are desperate to have something happen and also afraid that we will do something wrong. As our folks have said this spring, " It’s hard when you don’t fully understand what the other culture expects and you make a mistake, which could be minor or major depending on the culture. I am very anxious to travel further and be able to interact with other cultures. I’m nervous that I will make a mistake and offend someone or that I will say the wrong thing," and "we will have to take our time with decisions and ideas we have in Deipsloot and make sure to look at every situation we're involved with from every angle to come up with the best solutions that are fair and benefit everyone as well as possible."

The next time I write I will concentrate on some suggestions for how to tame some of these fears and how to be good teammates not just with ourselves but with those we will meet int he upcoming weeks. For now I will close with a story that illuminates some of the things that I think we all worry about but don't necessarily have names for.

 "Elephant and Mouse were best friends.  One day Elephant said, "Mouse, let's have a party!:  Animals gathered from far and near.  They ate, and drank, and sang, and danced. And nobody celebrated more exuberantly than the elephant.  After it was over, Elephant exclaimed, "Mouse, did you ever go to a better party?  What a celebration!"  But Mouse did not answer.  "Where are you?" Elephant called.  hen he shrank back in horror.  There at his feet lay the Mouse, his body ground into the dirt--smashed by the exuberance of his friend, the Elephant.  "Sometimes that is what it is like to do mission with you Westerners," the African storyteller commented.  "It is like dancing with an Elephant."  (Helping Without Hurting In Short-Term Missions Participants Guide, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, pg. 54)

All of us want to be good dance partners!

Team USA Participates in Media Day

On Friday, June 4, Fox Valley Technical College held a Media Day event, which gave Team USA a nice opportunity to talk about the upcoming events in Diepsloot.  NBC-TV 26 from Green Bay, the Appleton Post Crescent and Insight magazine covered the event.
(Not bad for a day that coincided with the Packers' first team practice, eh?) We will post the results of this coverage as they come in!  

Friday also gave Doug and Randy a chance to work on "coach" things, and it gave team members Kerri, Lila and Pete an opportunity to work together.

Here's Kerri!

Pete and Lila are building and designing, but not giving too much away!

We are so Grateful to Our Sponsors, Part 2!

Earlier I told you about our higher ed partners, who are valuable not just because they allow Doug and Randy and I to work on this project, but also because they are preparing young professionals like this year's and last year's Team USA members to go out into the world and make a difference.

Today I would like to share a little more about how Team USA is working with our Legacy Sponsors even before we get to South Africa.  We are so lucky to have the opportunity to work with each of you.

At the most fundamental level, our sponsoring organizations have a long history of support for the plumbing and plumbing engineering profession.  MCAA, MCERF, PHCC and ASPE all have established relationships with educational institutions to get students excited about the profession and ensure a future supply of high quality graduates.

At MSOE, Doug works closely with the student chapter of MCAA.   MSOE students have traditionally excelled at the MCAA annual design competition.  The approach Team USA uses to prepare for events like CPC India and this year's competition in Diepsloot is similar to the preparation students have used for the MCAA events and MSOE's senior design project.  Jill Vane Boom, one of last year's team members, was instrumental is starting MSOE's student chapter and was involved in the design competition for three years.

And look where all that got her!

Team USA has really learned and benefited from this experience, as you can see below, at the design presentation event in Nashik!

On a professional and personal level, both Doug and Randy are directly involved with our sponsors.
Doug is a member of ASPE and is active in the local chapter in Southeastern Wisconsin.  He has spoken at the ASPE national conference and well and also presents their Green Plumbing Design workshop.  He is also a member of the ASPE research foundation board of directors.

Randy is a current member of IAPMO, ASPE and PHCC-WI, and he works directly with MCAA-WI as it relates to plumbing apprenticeship training at both Local 400 Plumbers and Steamfitters--Kaukauna, WI.  He has a application pending as "member at large" for the board of directors for PHCC-WI and is currently working with them to establish and education committee and eventually become involved as a provider of continuing education classes on behalf of PHCC-WI for plumbers across the state.

As Randy says, "Our sponsors truly speak volumes to the importance of safe plumbing systems throughout not only the United States, but countries abroad.  Their support of Team USA and the Community Plumbing Challenges gives us hope for our goal that everyone should be able to be provided with safe operating sanitation systems.  They also champion regulations to protect our water supplies and environment by developing standards and products that only use the minimum quantities of water to effectively serve the users and yet safeguard the wasting of valuable resources."


None of us would have been able to imagine wild ride of the past three years without IAPMO, who have supported this project and committed themselves to changing communities and lives.  On a very practical level, they have supported Team USA in too many ways to document here, so the best way to say thank you may be with pictures, which really do say a thousand words!
                                                                                                                                                                                        We had the time of our lives!       We promise to write home from Diepsloot!                           

We Are So Grateful to our Sponsors!

Today I'd like to share a little bit about our sponsors--both our legacy sponsors and our academic institutions that play such a big part in allowing us to work on this project and also are so important to supporting the future of our professions and creating a better world.  

We have three college "partners" this year--Black River Technical College, where I work, Fox Valley Technical College, which is home to Randy, Kerri, Pete and Tyler, and Milwaukee School of Engineering, where Doug and Lila are based.  All three of these institutions offer wonderful programs for students and support faculty and staff in involvement with great initiatives.  

BRTC (http://www.blackrivertech.edu//) has two campuses in northeast  Arkansas, one in rural Pocahontas, and one in Paragould, a more industrial community.  The college offers over sixty programs in Allied Health, Law Enforcement and Emergency Services, Business,General Studies, and Technical programs, including Automation Technology, Structural Steel and Pipe Welding, and Electrical and Plumbing Apprenticeships.  


Martha loves the opportunity to provide students with access to education and to play a part in economic development in rural Arkansas.

Fox Valley Technical College located in Neenah, Appleton, Wisconsin( http://www.fvtc.edu/) provides high-quality education and training that support student goals, a skilled workforce, and the economic vitality of the region. FVTC offers more than two hundred associate degree, technical diploma and certificate programs, and instruction related to fifteen apprenticeship trades, in addition to providing services to business and industry. The college serves about 50,000 people annually, more than any other technical college in Wisconsin.
  

Our Fox Valley team members are all involved in making Wisconsin a leader in water quality, and they will bring those skills and a great attitude to South Africa.

Milwaukee School of Engineering (https://msoe.edu) is an independent, non-profit university with about 2,900 students that was founded in 1903. MSOE offers bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering, business and nursing. The university has a national academic reputation; longstanding ties to business and industry; dedicated professors with real-world experience; a 96% placement rate.The University  focuses on the preparation of engineers in many disciplines, including building mechanical systems.  Most students have internships to augment the academic programs at the university and many get involved in competitions as another way to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-life application of academic principles.  All curricula focus on coordination of traditional core courses (general studies) with the technical courses expected in a high caliber engineering degree. 

Here are Doug and a group of MSOE students participating in an international Servant-Leadership trip to Paita, Peru. The team helped install new water purifiers at a local school site. A total of 25 purification units were set up to ensure that safe and clean drinking water is available to the community. 

I