Admitting failure.

What happens when an NGO admits failure? International aid groups make the same mistakes over and over again. David Damberger uses his own engineering failure in India to call for the development sector to publicly admit, analyze, and learn from their missteps. (Filmed at TEDxYYC.)

David Damberger’s work with Engineers Without Borders has taken him from communities in India to Southern Africa to help build infrastructure — and learn.

David got his start with Engineers without Borders when he founded the organization’s Calgary chapter. He then worked for four years as the Engineers without Border’s director of Southern African programs, consulting with governments and NGOs on agriculture, sanitation and development. In 2009, he co-founded Ethical Ocean, an online retail company focused on ethical and fair-trade goods.