Humanitarian Demining Training Center welcomes new director

Photo By Ericka Gillespie | Former director Jonathon D. Green of the Humanitarian Demining Training Center stepped out of his role and passed the torch on to the incoming director, Angel L. Belen on September 22, 2023.  

FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VA, UNITED STATES

09.22.2023

Story by Ericka Gillespie 

Fort Gregg-Adams

FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va. –The Humanitarian Demining Training Center welcomed a familiar face as the new director at the end of September.

Former director Jonathan D. Green of the Humanitarian Demining Training Center stepped out of his role Sept. 22 and passed the torch on to the incoming director, Angel L. Belen.

HDTC’s mission is to train soldiers how to dispose of land mines, explosives, and unsecure materials properly and safely. HDTC provides the necessary assistance to help remove any dangerous explosives or unsecure materials to make land useable again and provide a safer livelihood for the communities impacted.

“Due to conflicts of the past, land can be unusable,” Belen said.

Being no stranger to the efforts of the Humanitarian Demining Training Center, Belen was the HDTC deputy director for the past 17 years. He hopes to continue progress on everything that he was doing in his previous role while, continuing even further as the HDTC director.

“My future and current goal as the new director, is to provide and promote the needed skillsets to our soldiers to accomplish our efforts in demining,” he added.

The center also is involved in assisting partner nations with explosive ordnance disposal, physical security, and stockpiling management of conventional munitions until the excess or unsecure materials can be destroyed properly.

“Demining provides an impact that carries on from this generation to future generations,” the new director said. “I get to see the positive aftereffects of demining, I get to see families recover their lands, structures being built, and people cultivating their lands on fields they previously couldn’t walk on.”

Belen has worked closely with Green for many years, so both expect a smooth transition.

For the past 13 years, Green has been the organization’s leader, despite holding two different titles - supervisory program manager of humanitarian demining action, and director of Humanitarian Demining Training Center.

“To me, the importance of demining is about saving lives,” Green said. “There’s an immediate and long-term impact that comes with demining. The immediate impact is the smile on people’s faces when they know they can walk on their land and not be harmed. The long-term impact is you see is production happening again, economic growth that starts to happen, and livelihoods begin to prosper towards a better future.”

Green relocated HDTC to Fort Gregg-Adams (formerly Fort Lee) in 2014. HDTC was previously headquartered at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., after being established in 1996.

“My greatest accomplishment was also my biggest challenge,” he said. “The move had second and third level affects. This allowed us to gain greater access to Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is in Northern Virginia, a bigger expansion of training opportunities with (The Ordnance School), as well as provide more opportunities for our staff and their families.”

Green will be moving forward as the Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief and Civic Aid Program Analyst as well as being the Supervisory Humanitarian Demining Action Program Manager at the DSCA, Humanitarian Disaster Relief and Demining Division. Part of the new job will be t oversee the HDTC at Fort Gregg-Adams.

“Over the years it has been a question of asking, how do we measure how effective we are,” said Green. “There is still so much work to be done in our HDTC program, with myself moving forward to lead the policy and programmatic execution and with Mr. Belen as the director focused on the training center operations, I think we are going to be in a great position for the future.”

In his new position, Green hopes to be able to present accurate numbers of what explosive and unsecure material has been removed from each area, while building a synergy from the base level up and the top level down.

“This change is for the better. This will allow our team to achieve better development, accountability, while progressing and expanding our training opportunities in the future,” said Green.

• Date Taken: 09.22.2023
• Date Posted: 10.02.2023 14:53
• Story ID: 454909
• Location: FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VA, US