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GE’s presence has been growing significantly in Africa in recent years — and part of that has been in the form of medical aid to communities in need. This week, a GE team made up of leaders in GE’s African American Forum traveled to Africa to meet with government officials and business leaders — and to visit healthcare facilities where GE has provided solutions that include healthcare equipment and support with water, energy, communications and infrastructure development.

With veterans being honored all over the world on November 11 — Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day and Armistice Day in other countries — we’re saluting GE employees this week who have served their country and now are putting the skills they honed in the military to work right here. Yesterday, we met Staff Sgt. Justin Brumberg, who went from GE’s research labs to Iraq and back. Today, in the audio slide show below, we meet James Eldridge, who works at GE Aviation in Lynn, Massachusetts. Having joined the U.S. Marines in 1997, James has been on tours of duty all over the world. He’s now drawing on those experiences to help other GE veterans as vice president of the veterans’ council at the Lynn plant. As James says, “There’s leadership in war. You definitely learn to take initiative and take charge and try to do the right thing. In the Marines, we’re taught that we need to get the job done no matter what it takes. I’m in manufacturing. I try to apply all of the fundamentals I learned in the Marines in here.”

With countries around the world honoring veterans this Wednesday — Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day and Armistice Day elsewhere — we’re taking a look this week at some of the GE employees who have served in the military and are now putting their leadership skills and uncompromising character to work across the company. There are currently more than 11,000 self-identified US veterans at GE — and many more who served their countries outside the US. In our first video, Staff Sergeant Justin Brumberg describes both his service in Iraq — and his work on pulse detonation engine technologies as a combustion research engineer in the lab at GE Global Research.

In our stories last week, we talked with our employee volunteers on the ground in Cambodia, where medical equipment donated by GE is now up and running in three hospitals. Today, we turn to Africa with Part 4 of our recent video series chronicling the work that International Medical Corps is doing at clinics in conflict and poverty-stricken communities in Chad. Using medical equipment donated by GE — which includes mobile x-rays, ultrasounds, baby warmers, patient monitors and fetal dopplers — the IMC teams have been working with local doctors at three targeted hospitals to help provide care to nearly 200,000 people, including 30,000 refugees from Darfur. In the video, IMC’s Country Director for Chad, Dayan Woldemichael, describes how doctors now have the tools they need — and patients no longer have to travel 950-miles to use equipment at the next closest facility.

Scientists at GE Global Research recently held their annual “TECHfest” celebrations — essentially giant show-and-tells in which hundreds of the company’s top scientists give their R&D colleagues a sneak peek into their latest discoveries. In the video below, shot at GE’s research center in Niskayuna, New York, GE’s Adam Rasheed explains his work on the advanced propulsion technology known as a pulse detonation engine. Nearby, GE’s Herman Wiegman explains his work to develop batteries for the next generation of electric cars. And further down the tent, biomedical engineer Megan Rothney describes the imaging technology that’s being used to distinguish fat from lean body mass in order to shed light on diseases that affect overweight people such as coro­nary heart disease, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and some cancers. It’s part of a unique collaboration between GE and food giant Nestlé, described in detail after the video, that is already seeing real-world use.