Oxfam America president to talk at Engineers Without Frontiers conference

Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America since 1995, will be the keynote speaker at the closing banquet for the Engineers Without Frontiers USA (EWF-USA) first national conference, Sept. 17-20 at Cornell.

Offenheiser, who graduated from Cornell in 1977 with an M.S. degree in development sociology, will speak Sept. 20 at 8 p.m. at the Clarion Hotel, 1 Sheraton Drive, near campus. His talk is free and open to the public. Boston-based Oxfam America is part of an international confederation of 12 organizations cooperating to combat suffering and poverty in more than 100 countries.

Another conference participant will be Paula Huntley, author of the best-selling book The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo. She will speak today, Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Statler Auditorium on campus. Her talk and all the other conference events also are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule, visit http://www.ewf-usa.org/conference.

The conference is titled "Bridging the Divide" and highlights EWF-USA's commitment to interdisciplinary and participatory methods for achieving appropriate, sustainable development. Participating in workshops and panel discussions at the conference will be many of the more than 400 members of EWF-USA from more than 30 universities across the United States, including Cornell. The two-year-old national, non-profit organization is based at Cornell.

Other conference speakers will include Patricia Galloway, president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers, George Bugliarello of the National Academy of Engineering and Cornell graduate Dan Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley.

EWF-USA is a national service organization that partners with developing communities to foster cultural, educational and technical exchange. It aims to engage students and young professionals in hands-on community planning through internships with development agencies, through service-based projects and through foreign study.