Toni Rüttimann
[1] Companies contribute by donating their used material and local governments concede permits and help with transportation in recognition of the fact that the main effort is made by the population.
In every country where Toni works, he builds up a small team of national welders and looks for one "bridge-building partner", to whom he teaches his craft, and who in turn is able to perform maintenance duties on the bridges built.
[5] In 1987, two weeks before finishing high school at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, Toni sees images on TV of the destruction caused by an earthquake in Ecuador.
He decides to depart to South America on the night of his graduation, taking his personal savings and 9000 Swiss Francs donated by neighbours of Pontresina and the Engadine Valley.
With his technical help and assistance from the people of the Flor del Valle village, cut off from the outside by a tributary of the Aguarico river, he builds a 52-meter long suspension bridge.
[3][4] In the Amazon region of Ecuador he puts together a system for building bridges with the communities, requiring almost no money: the villagers bring stone and sand, the hard wood and their labour.
[2][6] In April 2001 he starts working with two teams, with Walter Yánez in Mexico and with his two new Cambodian partners, Yin Sopul, mechanic, and Pen Sopoan, truck driver, both survivors of the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.
[3] Confined to a hospital bed and then admitted to the National Medical Rehabilitation Centre of the Princess Sirindhorn in Thailand, regardless, Toni never stops working.
In the beginning with a pencil between his lips and the use of his two thumbs, he creates a computer program for transforming the measurements sent by his colleagues from Mexico and Cambodia into clear and complete instructions, so that they can continue building bridges via remote control.
From 2004 to 2008 he builds 58 bridges in the Vietnam Mekong Delta provinces of Ben Tre, Bac Lieu, Tra Vinh and Dong Thap.
In other places they have been rendered ugly due to the lack of maintenance, or even destroyed by natural disasters, as occurred in 2008 in the Páez River valley in Colombia.
[3] This is mainly attributable to the fact that local people are used to heavy labour and that strict safety rules and procedures have been followed during prefabrication and construction.
[7] Then there is the international bridge between Honduras and El Salvador, that connects the communities of Mapulaca and Victoria, built by villagers who, in previous years, had fought against each other.
My dream is not so much to build bridges as such, but rather to help heal wounds, ease suffering, draw people together from all walks of life to create something that is beautiful, something that is good.
