In 1992 Bob and Cathy Hedlund came to Central Asia with a vision for wholistic development. Trained as a Colorado mining engineer, Bob was first drawn to the Aral Sea basin. There he witnessed first-hand the environmental devastation caused by the diversion of Uzbekistan's two main rivers into a vast network of irrigation canals. Staggering under the weight of hyper-saline sea water, ground-water contamination, and shoreline desertification, by the 1990's the Aral Sea had become one of the world's worse ecological disasters of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, in Karakalpakistan, Uzbekistan's poorest province, where others saw only catastrophe, Bob saw opportunity. Where conventional wisdom foretold doom, Bob spoke hope.

Today after drilling more than 600 clean water wells and establishing a stable micro finance program in the hard-hit former fishing region of Muynak, Karakalpakistan, Hedlund's singular vision of hope has diversified JDA's transformational development work from the villages of the Aral Sea basin into the steppes of Kazakhstan, from the fertile Ferghana Valley to the mountainous rural poor of south-central Uzbekistan, from the ancient city of Samarqand to the recovering provinces of Northern Afghanistan.