Creative Analysis
Compassionate Calling
 |
|
John Bland combats poverty in Nicaraguan city |
Everything changed for John Bland when he witnessed children scavenging in mounds of rotting garbage for scraps of food to eat. His journey to help the starving people of Chinandega, Nicaragua, would lead him away from the software company he co-founded to serve as the executive director of Amigos for Christ.
"I just followed what God was calling me to do," says Bland, MgtSci 83.
In 1998, while a partner at Effective Technologies and volunteering as a youth leader at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Buford, Ga., Bland spearheaded a fund-raiser to help feed the children of Chinandega.
"We were looking for a service project for the high school kids. Through an international organization, we found a project to raise money to build a cafeteria for kids who were eating at a garbage dump in Chinandega," Bland says.
"I decided to go down to Nicaragua with a friend of mine to check out the place and see the reality of what we were doing. I was in the Peace Corps for two years in Paraguay after I graduated from Tech. I had a pretty good feel for what it was going to be like," he says. "This was a lot worse. The poverty level was extreme."
A missionary took Bland, armed with a video camera, to the Chinandega dump. "It was unbelievable, watching kids sifting through the dump, eating food they found. It was terrible. When we came back, I showed the video to the kids at youth group. The motivation to do something more was there," he says.
In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch ravaged Nicaragua. A mudslide killed 3,000 people in Chinandega. An already desperate situation was made almost incomprehensibly bleak.
In April 1999, Bland led a youth mission trip to Chinandega, where 20 teens and 18 adults spent spring break working on three houses. He says that on the plane trip back to Atlanta, he felt God calling him to form a nonprofit organization. He shared the idea with other Prince of Peace youth group members and leaders. One suggested the name, Amigos for Christ.
Moving the people of Chinandega from dwellings often made of cardboard and plastic into structurally sound houses was a top priority.
"The government put the survivors of the mudslide on land right next to the dump. One of the big projects was to get some 300 families out of there. We worked with a couple of other organizations and built 300 houses in two years."
Materials for each house cost about $2,000. Made of concrete slabs, a house consists of four rooms. There is no indoor plumbing or electricity.
When completed, a deed is handed to a grateful Nicaraguan family. Amigos for Christ didn’t stop with the houses, Bland says. "Once the homes were built, we built the school. We pay the teachers’ salaries. We pay for food. You’ve got to provide a lunch, because if you don’t do that as the motivation to come, they won’t show up.
"We also have a free clinic. We employ a doctor, a nurse and a dentist. We bought a SUV and we employ another doctor who goes out into the rural areas and does family practice every day."
An offshoot, PCs for Christ, is working to put computers in the vocational and secondary schools, the only ones that have electricity. A 70-acre ranch is being equipped with an irrigation system to help the Nicaraguans raise their own crops.
Creative Analysis
 |
|
Wonya Lucas, executive vice president for marketing of the Weather Channel
|
As a student at Northside High School in Atlanta, Wonya Lucas knew her passions for drama and science would take her one of two places.
"At 18 how do you know what you want to do for the rest of your life? All I knew was I was either going to Broadway or I was going to be an engineer," says Lucas, IE 83. "I chose engineering because it offered flexibility. It gave me the opportunity to use math and science, which I loved, and also allowed me to be creative because creative problem solving is involved in engineering, as well as analytics."
Lucas has combined both worlds in a career that brings engineering skills to bear in the entertainment world. But her stage is in Atlanta, not New York.
In July, Lucas took over as executive vice president of marketing for The Weather Channel, where she manages marketing and branding for The Weather Channel Networks and weather.com. She came to The Weather Channel from CNN, where she was senior vice president of strategic marketing for CNN Domestic Networks.
After graduating from Tech, Lucas worked for Westinghouse Electric before earning an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1990.
Lucas spent a year with Clorox and then joined Coca-Cola in Atlanta in consumer and trade advertising, promotion and new product development. Three and a half years later, she made the career leap into the television and cable industry.
She joined Turner Broadcasting in 1994 as strategic marketing director of Turner Corporate Marketing and was later named vice president of marketing for TNT, responsible for the development of advertising campaigns, promotions and trade marketing for the TNT programming brands.
In September 2000, Lucas was named senior vice president of strategic marketing for domestic networks of the CNN News Group.
Lucas made the decision to join The Weather Channel after being approached by network president Bill Burke, who was general manager of TBS while she was with TNT.
"He wanted a new team. He approached me about coming to The Weather Channel to fulfill his vision of evolving the Weather Channel brand," Lucas says. "It is a strong brand and when I looked at the brand and the audience, I knew there was so much work we can do that is relevant to people's lives.
"The people here are very passionate about The Weather Channel. They want to come to work and do good work and I love that. I like vision, I like to see where we are going and there are a lot of good things to do in the future. That gets me excited."
©2003 Georgia Tech Alumni Association
