Five Minutes With Tony Langer:

At TEDx­Can­ber­ra in 2013, Tony spoke about his work with Human­it­ari­an Mine Action Groups clear­ing unex­ploded bombs and land­mines in South­east Asia.

Tony is also the recip­i­ent of the Roy­al Order of Sahametrei (Knight­hood) for dis­tin­guished human­it­ari­an ser­vices to the King and People of Cam­bod­ia.

I caught up with Tony to dis­cuss where his TEDx­Can­ber­ra exper­i­ence has taken him, and what pro­jects he has been work­ing on since his talk almost three years ago.

What pro­jects have you been work­ing on since your TEDx­Can­ber­ra talk?

I have been work­ing to expand the pro­jects of the char­ity I formed – Imprint Solu­tions. In addi­tion to tar­geted clear­ance of explos­ive rem­nants of war and land­mines (redu­cing the risk of death or ser­i­ous injury) we are also con­duct­ing non-tech­nic­al and tech­nic­al sur­veys of poten­tially con­tam­in­ated land in Vietnam/Cambodia. This is to facil­it­ate the land’s use for agri­cul­tur­al pur­poses for people who are dis­ad­vant­aged by not being able to util­ise that land.

We have also been assist­ing with estab­lish­ing schools and edu­ca­tion pro­grams for affected impov­er­ished areas and eth­nic minor­it­ies. We provide train­ing and equip­ment for in-coun­try nation­als and minor­it­ies to achieve viably sus­tain­able ser­vices to bene­fit their com­munit­ies and fam­il­ies.

The biggest new area has been col­lab­or­at­ing with oth­er NGOs, uni­ver­sit­ies and com­pan­ies to facil­it­ate the exchange of know­ledge and skills to improve the lives of those suf­fer­ing and at risk in South­east Asia. This includes provid­ing the skills to estab­lish suit­able hous­ing and sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al pro­jects on explos­ive rem­nants of war cleared land for those impov­er­ished people.

What has been your greatest accom­plish­ment since TEDx­Can­ber­ra?

Being able to assist with the estab­lish­ment of a research and design labor­at­ory in Cam­bod­ia. This pro­gram man­u­fac­tures train­ing aids for explos­ive ord­nance dis­pos­al officers (loc­al Cam­bod­i­ans & Viet­namese) The train­ing aids are super­i­or to any oth­er train­ing aid, in that all the mov­ing parts func­tion as they would on the real thing and all parts are remov­able, mean­ing explos­ive ord­nance dis­pos­al (EOD) train­ees can fully under­stand the work­ings of the dan­ger­ous items they are deal­ing with and read­ily identi­fy where fuses and explos­ive com­pon­ents are loc­ated.

This pro­ject has been expan­ded to loc­al capa­city-build­ing assist­ance, and is now train­ing Cam­bod­i­an uni­ver­sity stu­dents in engin­eer­ing, CAD and 3D design free of charge. This provides oppor­tun­it­ies for learn­ing that the stu­dents wouldn’t oth­er­wise have access to or been able to afford. In con­junc­tion with Han­di­cap Inter­na­tion­al, we are work­ing towards bet­ter meth­ods of man­u­fac­tur­ing pros­thet­ics and the use of 3D print­ers in pros­thet­ics and oth­er related items for han­di­capped people and vic­tims of explos­ive rem­nants of war.

If you could speak at TEDx­Can­ber­ra again on another top­ic, what would you talk about and why?

Pover­ty alle­vi­ation. Because I believe that with all the wealth, resources, equip­ment and know­ledge that exist in this age, no per­son should be liv­ing in pover­ty.

Do you have any advice for future TEDx­Can­ber­ra speak­ers?

Don’t get nervous. People are genu­inely inter­ested in what you have to say, so take advant­age of that to really get your mes­sage across.

What was the best thing about your TEDx­Can­ber­ra exper­i­ence? 

Meet­ing so many people from vari­ous walks of life and being able to freely engage with those people. Also listen­ing to people’s stor­ies and see­ing their pas­sion and ded­ic­a­tion to their cause was truly inspir­ing.

How did speak­ing at TEDx­Can­ber­ra impact your life?

It provided me with a lot more con­fid­ence when speak­ing pub­licly, and estab­lished net­works of thought­ful, intel­li­gent and caring people.

Our theme this year is “All In”. Can you describe a time when you went all in?

This for me would prob­ably be the doc­u­ment­ary I arranged and fun­ded I put my life sav­ings into it, and it was a massive gamble. I had no idea about mak­ing films or docos, so apart from being a big under­tak­ing fin­an­cially it was a massive learn­ing curve for me. Whil­st it’s still ongo­ing, I am con­fid­ent it will achieve its aims of rais­ing aware­ness once it’s com­pleted this year, and raise aware­ness to the issues.