Roundtable Reviews Mentoring And Capacity Building in Afghanistan

摘要

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency hosted a roundtable discussion on November 20 in Arlington, Virginia, that addressed the progress of the program established in Afghanistan in which U.S. firms act as mentors to Afghan engineers and firms in order to expand the civil engineering profession there. The roundtable was held as a follow-up meeting to a workshop held last July at which senior members of the engineering profession, together with representatives of educational, government, and professional organizations, met to discuss ways of helping engineers and engineering in that country. (See "Workshop Seeks Mentors to Guide Afghanistan's Reconstruction," ASCE News, August 2007.) "ASCE has a lot of capability. Our goal is to make that capability available to others," said Mike Sanio, M.ASCE, the Society's director of international alliances and the roundtable's moderator, at the beginning of the discussion. The roundtable included participants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (established in 2002 and administered by the World Bank), and several prominent engineering firms.