Engineering Inc. - November/December 2019 - 43

dangerous, narrow highway bridge to
get to school.
Locals were busy with the potato
harvest during construction, however,
between five and 20 community
members came out to help with the
bridge every day, according to Conley.
One of the biggest challenges of the
build was breaking up a refrigeratorsized boulder that was blocking the
path of cabling. "It took about a day
and a half of chipping away," Conley
says. "Moving it was not an option. It must have weighed
2,000 pounds."
On the company's 2017 trip, an anticipated delivery of
tar failed to arrive, and team members coordinated with
a neighboring village to procure a drum of tar from an
abandoned lot.
"After loading the drum into the back of a truck and
transferring it back to the bridge site, we built a fire to heat
the tar so we could tar the cables," says Sarah Cathcart, an
associate vice president in the firm's Dallas office. "It was
interesting how resilient and adaptable the entire team had to
be. You have an initial plan, but you are also aware that when
you get in the country, your plan rarely works out the way you
think it will."

"The company supports the
employees and gives them the
resources to make a difference in
another community."
SARAH CATHCART
ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT
MICHAEL BAKER INTERNATIONAL

community," she says. "That speaks a lot to the company
culture."
In Mojocoya, villagers celebrated the bridge inauguration
with a meal of chicken and potatoes, traditional dance
performances, and dozens and dozens of snapshots taken with
the Polaroid camera that the build team brought with them.
But in a quiet moment earlier that day, Pomerleau walked
the length of the new bridge alone. "It was peaceful and calm,"
she says. "Looking over the edge, I could imagine the river
flowing full, and the benefits the community will have long
after we were gone." n
Calvin Hennick is a business, technology and travel writer based in
Milton, Massachusetts.

FEELING THE IMPACT

Employees who have made a trip with Bridges to Prosperity
believe it is especially gratifying to see the tangible product
of their work while also getting to know the people whose
lives will be improved by the new footbridge.
When the team in Mojocoya was not putting in long
hours of back-breaking labor, they were eating with the
locals, trying to communicate in mostly broken Spanish,
playing pickup soccer with the children, and going on a fivehour hike.
And those connections-both with each other and with
the people of Mojocoya-made an impact from the start.
The residents rang church bells and gathered to welcome
the team members as they arrived in the village. Susan
Pomerleau, a project engineer in the firm's Santa Ana,
California, office, recalls saying to herself on that first day: "I
am going to remember this day forever."
"It is pretty special when you are able to build something
and see it standing there, and also see the people who were
helped," says Conley. "It has definitely given me a different
perspective on life, and on what I consider to be problems.
The problems we face day in, and day out are different from
the problems they face in Kayarani. They are not worried
about whether their phone is charged. They are worried
about whether their livestock is healthy."
Cathcart says that Michael Baker International's
partnership with Bridges to Prosperity demonstrates the
firm's commitment to helping its employees' philanthropic
efforts. "The company supports the employees and
gives them the resources to make a difference in another

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