Learning Collaboration, One Box at a Time

Date Posted: April 3, 2018

Posted In: Ideas, Regionalism,

by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum STL

The little bit of Latin that I absorbed before I got booted from the high school seminary tells me that the word collaboration comes from collaborare — literally “working together.” It’s a lesson that we have had trouble absorbing as an industry, a region, and a nation.

Within the last few weeks I have heard from friends and colleagues who were frustrated about the lack of collaborative effort in addressing our industry and regional issues. It didn’t matter if the topic was helping at-risk kids to find their futures, addressing the opioid epidemic, educating our industry on cultural competency, or attracting new development. The common thread was that there is a lot of energy and action, but very little focus on coordination or effort at avoiding duplication.

On Wednesday (April 4) I’ll be participating in a meeting which will explain the United Way of Greater St. Louis’ new community investment process. As a board member of UWGSL I participated in a five-month task force that examined the agency’s traditional approach and developed recommendations to address the way that people give today and how that giving can best impact the issues faced by our community. When I’m asked to explain the new model I describe it this way: “Pay for performance, pay for innovation, pay for collaboration.”

Collaboration was also at the heart of presentations by our first two speakers in the Forum’s 13-month, five-part series on regionalism. Rather than focusing on political issues, both David Rusk in December and Dr. David Miller in March suggested that identifying common interests and forming collaborations to address them is what their research has shown is most effective.

On June 15 our speaker will be Peter Goldmark, who among the many accomplishments in his distinguished career, served as executive director of the Port Authority. The NY/NJ entity served as the model for Bi-State Development. I very much expect that his message will further the discussion of regional collaborations.

Boxes to the Mountains

Sometimes I think that we make the practice of collaboration much more difficult than it needs to be. Recently I have had the opportunity to be a part of a simple but effective collaborative effort started by a remarkable woman.

Lynda Burgmann has spent most of her life helping other people. After a career at the YMCA in St. Louis she became a consultant to many not for profits and philanthropies.

But it was her avocation – love of the outdoors that took her from kayaking the Antarctic to climbing mountains – that brought about the formation of the charitable not-for-profit that would become known as “Kindness in a Box“.

While hiking the Incan trail in the Maras District of the Andes in 2006 on the way to Machu Picchu, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, she came upon indigenous Peruvian women and their children harvesting salt from pools on the mountainside.

“It’s been eleven years since I hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and saw the impoverished, indigenous Quechua people,” Lynda said recently. “I knew immediately that I would help them make a better life for themselves and their children.”

Upon her return to the United States, Lynda immediately began a humanitarian “box drive”. She sent a box to every woman she knew and asked them to fill the box with new or gently used clothing, toys and school supplies.

Lynda’s daughter e-mailed the Oprah Winfrey Show regarding Lynda’s “kindness box drive”. A producer contacted Lynda inviting her to the “Oprah Winfrey Pay It Forward Show” which recognized her charitable work and the work of many others.

In December 2006, over two tons of clothing, toys and school supplies were shipped to over 500 children in the villages of Maras. Since then, KIAB, 501(c)3 charity, has undertaken projects ranging from lunch programs, greenhouses, to community centers to microlending. In 2015, Lynda was awarded the United Nations Human Rights Award by the Christian Women United of St. Louis.

In 2016, KIAB renovated a deteriorated, unused clinic in Maras. Soon after the completion of its renovation in late 2017 Lynda Burgmann met my wife, Dr. Kathi Thimsen, an assistant professor at BJC Goldfarb School of Nursing. Soon after, Kathi began organizing Nurses 2 Peru as an outreach of KIAB to help bring sustainable healthcare to the District of Maras.

Later this month, Kathi will be leading a group of 25 nurses, nurse practitioners, nursing students, and civilians — including our 17-year-old granddaughter Abby (who wants to be a nurse) to Maras Peru. The Maras District of Peru has endemic malnutrition which leads to its being a major world site of chronic stunting of its children. On this trip to Peru we will be working with Peruvian medical personnel to assess conditions, perform medical assessments, establish the clinic and pharmacy and plan for its long term sustainability.

Things are measurably better for kids in the Peruvian Andes because one person passed out boxes and asked people she knew to collaborate with her on making things better. If we can focus on working together (collaborare) to fill boxes here in our home region instead of just checking boxes to say we’re “working on it” we can see real change.