Note by moderator: I have moved this into a new thread as it had in the meantime deviated from the original topic of call for proposals (EvM)


Juergen, Marijn:

The WSH Team of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF WSH Team) is currently discussing the movement of our internal science and technology grantee forum, to highly qualified international partners. The goal is a public forum. Additionally, the platform would be used to disseminate BMGF WSH Team final reports on the Reinvent the Toilet program to the public.

In the meantime, 40 of our grantees in the area of sanitation science and technology, will be giving technical presentations at the Fecal Sludge Management Conference (FSM2) in Durban, SA, at the end of this month. (www.pid.co.za/).

Cheers

Carl Hensman
Program Officer, WSH Team, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
(and Manager of the Reinvent the Toilet grant portfolio)

Carl, thx for the update! I am glad the BGMF WSH Team wants to have a more public platform on its work.

>The goal is a public forum<
Please contact the SuSanA secretariat ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) if the SuSanA can be of any help regarding this. I am sure we could also have an extra section on this forum for the BMGF initiative (only). The bonus for BMGF would be the professional community already found on this forum and we wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel (no pun .

Dear Carl,

Great, I hope the BMFG will indeed create a public platform and I sincerely hope the discussions on the platform will be as constructive (and friendly critical) as the ones on this forum. At current people working in sanitation are quite frequently asked opinions on the re-invent the toilet challenge, they will be much easier to answer if there is more information available on the technologies under development.

Regards

Marijn

Marijn Zandee wrote:


Just to tantalize you.

We're finalizing grant agreement details with a partner who we believe has exactly what we need to support sanitation science and technology in a open and constructive manner.

Should there be no unforseen issues, you'll know by the end of the year, if not sooner.

Carl

CarlHensman wrote:


Marijin et al:

Sometimes it's frustrating having discussions about something when you really want to say what's going on, but can't. Sometimes it's just downright fun.

There will be an official press release posted by SuSanA staff, but I'd like to tell you personally that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a grant to the Stockholm Environmental Institute that will facilitate the transfer of the existing private Gates 'Sanitation Network' into the public ecosystem of SuSanA.org.

The grant is for an initial 15 months and will not only include the transfer and opening up of the Sanitation Network, but will also include the beginning of a library where at a minimum, new final grant reports from the WSH Science and Technology Program will be uploaded and indexed for search capability. I will let the SuSanA staff educate everyone on the details.

For all of you who were telling the SuSanA staff, on the side, that they should be talking to us about hosting this venture, thank you for caring deeply about this community and being interested in the work at the Gates Foundation. Just so you know, SuSanA was talking to us about this in May this year.

As for the WSH Team at the Gates Foundation, we are excited by the opportunity to actively promote contributions to the SuSanA network.

Carl

This is to corroborate Carl Hensman's message.

Stockholm Environment Institute and the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (that means you!) have been chosen by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to engage a broad range of experts (yourselves and others soon to join in) in taking the results from the Sanitation Science and Technology Programme to the next level.

Sanitation is a neglected chapter in human development. But it has an important role in the story of economic and social development. As sanitation services have become second nature, productivity has benefitted from healthier populations. Without it, disease and death take a large toll, and hinder progress. Right now, 2.5 billion people are without basic sanitation services and over 4000 children die every day from disease caused by inadequate sanitation and hygiene.

The sector is currently riddled with various levels of dysfunction due to inappropriate and unsustainable approaches. The risks can become even more apparent in cases of disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. Making sanitation services widely available, affordable and resilient requires a collective effort from sanitation experts and professionals from fields as diverse as architecture and urban planning, social marketing, sociology, agronomy, biochemistry and economics.

To bring together this collective effort and share knowledge on the new sanitation solutions, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has been selected by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to lead a knowledge sharing and discussion project surrounding their Sanitation Science and Technology Programme. The Programme has over 80 sanitation science and technology projects. The programme now wants to share the results from these in an open public forum engaging a broad range of experts and the general public to source innovative and sustainable sanitation solutions.

Over the next 15 months SEI will work with the Programme Grantees of the Foundation in order to broaden understanding and discussion about their work. The grantees will be encouraged to work through the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) that has about 200 institutional members and some 2000 discussants on its Discussion Forum (www.forum.susana.org).

For more information, please contact:
Anna Löfdahl – Press and Communications, Stockholm Environment Institute. Email: anna.lofdahl@sei-international.org Phone: +46 73 460 7693

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is an international non-profit research organization that has been engaged in environment and development issues at the local, national, regional and global policy levels for more than 20 years. Its goal is to bring about change for sustainable development by bridging science and policy. SEI has seven centres worldwide, in Stockholm; Oxford and York, U.K.; the United States; Bangkok, Thailand; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Tallinn, Estonia.

www.sei-international.org

Follow us on Twitter: @SEIresearch

Best wishes
--Arno Rosemarin/SEI

Dear Carl & Arno,

This is just a short note to say thank you for this very wonderful news. It looks like exciting times are ahead of us SuSanA members and I am really looking forward to seeing how the transition will take place. This is a great opportunity for us to further learn from each other, to collaborate and to keep up with the innovations and technologies for onsite sanitation systems.

I look forward to further details!

Best regards,

Doreen

Dear all,

I also see it as very good news for the SuSanA community and am excited to see how it all develops!
I am attaching here the presentation I gave at the FSM-2 conference in Durban on 30 October which explains a bit more about this discussion forum: why it was established, the spirit in which it is run, what other forums there are, the moderators behind it, what the moderators do, what the plans for the future are and briefly what the mentioned involvement of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entails. The presentation was called "Accelerating learning in sustainable sanitation" and also explains the other resources of SuSanA for learning.




Am happy to receive any questions or comments on this.

Heinz-Peter Mang from China remarked that in China Youtube and Flickr are banned and requested if a DVD could be made by the secretariat that contains the videos on SuSanA's Youtube channel and the photos on Flickr.

Kevin Wall from CSIR asked if whole DVDs full of documents could be uploaded to the SuSanA library. My answer was, in principle "yes".

Perhaps Trevor, who was also in attendance, remembers other questions that were asked on that day (or we can watch it on the video of the presentation once the videos have been made available).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear all,
For the benefit of those readers who only joined this forum this year, and in case you are wondering what's the deal with all these research grants that are being discussed on the forum:
The thread above this post explains it, and we have now added basic information about all the sanitation grants by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (current count is 77) to the SuSanA website, please see here:
www.susana.org/lang-en/research/funded-b...on/resource-recovery

(they are grouped in 5 categories, select from the menu on the left hand side to access the different categories)

Within each category we have grouped it by continent where the lead organisation is based.

With this information, you can now easily see which grants have already been introduced on the forum and which ones are yet to come in the next months. I hope it's not all too overwhelming but that you are finding this a wonderful opportunity to really find out what top researchers worlwide are twisting their brains around to advance the sanitation sector a little bit! I am finding it fascinating and am learning a lot.

Also interesting, when you look at the categories and continents that a lot of the research is being carried out in the US of course (fair enough, as that's where the BMGF is based and where the money is coming from), but when it comes to Europe, the UK-based organisations have done really well to be part of this. And no German organisation is in the lead for any of the research grants (being German myself, I noticed this of course). I guess there is not so much of a tradition at German universities to do research on sanitation in developing countries. Maybe this will change!? In Switzerland, there is Eawag and Eawag-Sandec who is doing this kind of work.

Anyway, I hope you find this little update on the status useful. It is an amazing level of insight, openness and willigness to share that we are seeing here, don't you agree?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Ms. Elisabeth,

That was an interesting and useful post of yours. While, there would be many organizations, working in the field of sanitation, I wonder if SuSanA has compiled a list of such organizations. A few, that I know of, are (water component is also included in the portfolios of some organizations): Sustainable Sanitation and Water Management (SSWM); Watersanitationhygiene.org; The Operation and Maintenance Network; SamSamWater Foundation; and sustainablesanitation.info

Regards,

F H Mughal