MILTON TOWNSHIP – At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Scott Christiansen will board a plane in Boston for Sri Lanka. Twenty-four hours later, he will land in the island’s capital, Colombo, where he will begin work that he hopes will save lives.

Christiansen, the area’s former River Valley Growth Council executive director and current head of the council’s spin-off organization, the Fractionation Development Center, will work for the Adventist Development Relief Agency and with other non-government organizations from around the world.

He aims to alleviate some of the pain caused by December’s tsunami that killed an estimated 150,000 people in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, including more than 30,000 in Sri Lanka.

He will work from an office in Colombo developing plans to create safe-drinking water systems and sanitation projects and other projects related to public health. He will also be responsible for assuring that various governments’ requirements for their funding of the relief plan are properly followed. More than a million Sri Lankans have been left homeless because of the tidal waves’ devastation.

He’ll be leaving his comfortable home and job, along with his wife, Dee, and their three children, for two weeks. He didn’t have to do it, but it is something he volunteered for immediately after the earthquake struck.

“There are people dying. If I do my job right, someone, somewhere isn’t going to die,” he said.

He said former employees of many non-governmental organizations were called up after the disaster. He had worked for ADRA for several years in Mongolia and China prior to coming to the River Valley as its first economic developer.

He said he feels an obligation to use the skills he has in such a disastrous, heart-breaking situation.

“There’s a sense of responsibility if you know how to do this stuff. I’ve been out of it for a few years, but I want to be there,” he said.

The two weeks or so he’ll be gone has been approved by growth council President Joseph Derouche. His time in Sri Lanka will also come from his vacation time with the growth council.

While he’s gone, River Valley Technology Center Director Norm MacIntyre will take on some of Christiansen’s duties. And thanks to e-mail, he’ll also continue to coordinate some of his biorefinery projects while planning relief efforts in villages and towns along the Sri Lankan coastline.

“I want to use my skills to help people,” he said.