World Water Week blog from Stockholm

The theme for this year's World Water Week is water quality

Credit: Stockholm World Water Week

6 September 2010

For those who are unfamiliar with Stockholm World Water Week, it is a big date in the calendar here at WaterAid.

It's the annual water event. Over 2,500 industry experts get together to present research, share knowledge and network. It is a hot (water) bed of innovation and information!

This year's theme is water quality, but you can extend the debates to span a very broad range of issues and approaches.

We will be attending various seminars, side events and meetings, soaking up as much as we can from the wealth of water expertise that inundates Stockholm for one week every year.

We will also be busy putting on our own events and sharing our experience and knowledge to other organisations.

This year the event has an additional dimension – it's just two weeks before the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in New York, and as we know the MDG target for sanitation is woefully behind target.

And Media Officer Mel Tompkins has been blogging all week right here, keeping you updated on these events and more...

Monday 6 September

It is clear from the very first moment you step into the conference centre that this is a truly international affair. The place is buzzing and there is a real sense of purpose. The fact that the UN Summit is just two weeks away is clearly at the forefront of everyone's mind. As I weaved my way over to the WaterAid stand I passed stalls from the likes of Unicef, African Development Bank, WASH United and many more.

I started the day by joining the WaterAid catch-up meeting by our stand. As WaterAid is involved in so many events  here there is a really impressive and diverse collection of experience huddled together. Lourdes Baptise and Maria Fernandez are here from WaterAid in India, and we are also joined by Per Stenbeck, the Chief Executive of WaterAid in Sweden and our Chair of WaterAid in Sweden, Jan Eliasson.

I grabbed our Chief Executive Barbara Frost and asked her to give us a one-minute introduction to WaterAid at Stockholm World Water Week:

The Opening Ceremony
Virtually everyone attended this – the room was packed. Speakers from Swedish Government, Kenyan Government and UNEP all gave stirring speeches about water and sanitation. Every one one of them pressed for the urgent need for water and sanitation to be high on the agenda at the upcoming UN Summit.

It was rounded off with the 2010 Laureate (winner of Stockholm Water Prize) Dr Rita R Colwell of Maryland University. She has done some fascinating and far-reaching research on cholera, and she was duly given a standing ovation. (FYI: WaterAid is a Laureate after winning this in 1995, not that I'm showing off…)

First event
Time for our first big event – the Equity and Inclusion seminar. Louisa Gosling, our resident equity and inclusion expert, gave a round-up of how WaterAid is mainstreaming the issue, and explained how it is now at the core of our planning and work on the ground. The seminar drew a big crowd – I estimate around 300 people scrambled for seats, plus a few more had to sit on the floor.

Our Head of Asia Region, Tom Palakudiyil, gave a really interesting and tangible talk which reflected research on Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in Nepal, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

Maria Fernandez continued the presentation, on the theme of menstrual hygiene management in rural India. If you're thinking 'ew' when you read that, you're probably not alone and it's for that very reason why it remains a taboo topic. Thus almost half the population in the developing world remains marginalised in terms of hygiene needs because people don't like talking about it. This is especially true for women in societies where it is still considered 'unclean' to be menstruating:

When Richard Carter, our highly esteemed Technical Support Unit head, spoke in the final panel debate of the event, he too emphasised the importance of reaching this enormous group of unserved people.

I asked Louisa how she thought the seminar had gone, she said: "It was good, it raised issues about people who are marginalized and explained how important it is that the voices that aren't normally heard, are. WaterAid is working hard to empower these groups of people and encourage them to speak and be heard."

And with the event over, everyone headed over to central Stockholm for the Mayor's Reception. And as I'm not there I will have to fill you in tomorrow! 

Tuesday 7 September

The pace may feel a little slower to start with in the main area today, but a peek behind session doors shows that people are really getting down to business...

A side event on SHARE, a pioneering sanitation research project, is so full that people are being turned away at the door! SHARE, which stands for Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity, is a five-year initiative led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). WaterAid is one of five partners that have come together to generate rigorous and relevant research into sanitation.

I caught up with WaterAid's Oliver Cumming, LSHTM's Professor Sandy Cairncross and Dr Richard Rheingans and asked them about the project and why it is so vital:

"We hope to deliver a culture of market research among sanitation workers worldwide," explained Professor Cairncross, "We have a number of interesting projects that are being funded by SHARE – one of them is randomised control trials of WaterAid sanitation programmes in Orissa, India. The randomised trial is the gold standard for evidence in public health - nobody has ever tested an ordinary sanitation programme in this way."

"Ultimately our goal is a process that improves performance, equity, effectiveness and sustainability," added Dr Rheingans.

The project will research in India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Malawi. For more information please visit www.SHAREresearch.org.

Today's video clip is from the top drawer – two minutes with Jan Eliassan. I asked him about Stockholm World Water Week, and the upcoming UN Summit...

This event is great to face-to-face meetings and I've seized the opportunity to chat with colleagues from across WaterAid internationally.

David Winder

Credit: WaterAid

I chatted with David Winder (pictured left), our WaterAid in America Chief Executive, and asked him what he was looking forward to taking back to New York with him:

"I'm keen to reach out to people working in Latin America and bring a network of contacts together. I want to take back confirmation of increased funding for our WaterAid programmes and clear the next steps for our new Nicaragua programme."

Exciting times indeed… you heard it here first!

Wednesday 8 September

Most people's days here are bookended with meetings. They start at breakfast and can end at night. Every minute of time is squeezed for opportunity. As one person from an NGO said to me, attending Stockholm World Water Week gives you the chance to cram weeks' worth of workshops, meetings and events into just a matter of days. Arranging these face-to-face chats and attending these workshops individually would take so much more time and money. "Long term we save so much money on project costs – everyone is here and it gets things really moving," she said.

As the movers and shakers were huddled in their breakfast meetings, I took the opportunity to check in with our progress on today's launch of our report: Ignored: The biggest killer of children - The world is neglecting sanitation . A quick browse on the internet showed that The Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley has featured this in her Global Health Blog, which is a great start.

Meanwhile back in Stockholm… the WaterAid event today is Sanitation and Water for All – A Global Framework for Action.

Our Head of Policy, Henry Northover explains what it's all about:

The day ends late, and rather unexpected. Far more used to putting other people up for talking, I find myself in a deserted conference centre with an ex-New York Times journalist, Malawian reporter and Dutch NGO worker Skyping a cross-cultural communication class at the University of Miami. If sanitation and water weren't on their agendas before, they sure are now!

Thursday 9 September

The day started as well as it could - an all-star Stockholm Water Prize Laureate panel seminar in the presence of the King of Sweden.  Three panels of Laureates answered questions on urban issues, water security and a 'global perspective'.

Barbara Frost joined five other Prize winners for the second panel topic.

Credit: WaterAid / Melanie Tompkins

Barbara Frost joined five other Prize winners for the second panel topic and added her expertise and optimism to the debate. The session asked the Laureates to give their advice to ministers and Barbara explained that investment into safe water is critical to people's health, productivity, empowerment of women and girls' education, "for me it's a no-brainer," she said.

For more information about the other Prize winners please visit the Laureates website - this will give you some idea as to the brainpower and influence that made up these panels. It was fantastic for WaterAid to be a part of this event and recognised as at such a high level.

Small Towns 
Another event that has been causing a stir is the Small Towns side event. I caught up with Erik Harvey, from our Technical team who explained a bit more about the project:

"There is a real urgency for more information on how to address the issue of small towns. There are more people in urban areas for the first time in history and trends are telling us that in 15 years the number and size of small towns will double, and double again in the 15 years after that. There's been very little work around this issue so far, which is why WaterAid has been conducting this research.

"This presentation was on the first phase of research. One thing we found was that a 'one-size fits all' approach is not going to work for small towns and that a tailored approach is necessary as each small town has its own development context.

"I was really encouraged by the buzz that there seemed to be in the event – we hope our research will help to influence further work into helping small towns gain access water and sanitation."

For more info please visit small-towns.org

Inspirational Leadership

Credit: WaterAid / Melanie Tompkins

At the wonderful World Water Week you can bump into some fascinating people. Barbara got talking to this year's Stockholm Industry Water Award winner Mr. Ek Sonn Chan, General Director of Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA).

Barbara was so inspired by his story of how he got 100% water supply to the people in Phnom Penh that she wanted to share his inspirational story.

In typical World Water Week fashion, we had to be very efficient with our time. I caught up with them both for the interview in the lobby of the hotel before they left for the Royal Banquet.

The main interview is too big for me to upload here, so I asked him for a very brief overview of what he achieved as a taster for what is to come. I cannot emphasise enough how impressive what he has achieved is and what a courageous leader he is.

And with that they were whisked off to the Royal Banquet for their finale of the week.

Final thoughts
So, as I type this, everything is starting to settle down. Even though there are events on tomorrow you can tell that people are starting to think of it as the end. So I asked Tom Palakudyl for his reflections on the week.

"It has been an excellent team effort throughout he whole week. We've been able to make important contributions to the discourse and cement our reputation as a reputable and professional organization.

"All WaterAid colleagues have made the most of being here and used the time to meet people, develop relationships and consolidate old contacts. We had a constant presence thanks to Jo and Julie who manned the stall, and it was really encouraging to see a constant flow of people coming to it.

The WaterAid stand

Credit: WaterAid / Melanie Tompkins

"The highlight for me was the Equity and Inclusion seminar, because you could see how it influenced other discourse in other seminars. I'm also really proud of the important seat that WaterAid has been elected to on the Sanitation and Water for all steering group."

So, I'm going to bow out on a high note. It's been a fascinating week and you can't help but feel encouraged by everything that goes on here.

Bye from Stockholm!

Mel