The report that Sean shared in his post is an excellent piece of work. Very well written and informative. A "must read" for anyone who wants to know more about what goes on with the Discussion Forum moderation "behind the scenes" and what steps we have taken to improve the overall performance and diversity on the forum.

I copy the acknowledgements from the report:

The financial and thematic support from WSSCC to the SuSanA Discussion Forum has been extremely valuable to the global sanitation sector, and wider WASH sector. We are very glad
that WSSCC decided to step up into this role. It was a logical step for their legacy that
strengthened the Forum, and SuSanA more broadly.

And also the executive summary:
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• This report summarises the work done under a grant from WSSCC (via UNOPS Geneva) to Skat Foundation to run and develop the SuSanA Forum over the 13-month period of November 2019 to December 2020.

• The SuSanA Forum is a well-established, vibrant online community within the sanitation sector and a major global knowledge exchange hub on topics relating to practical implementation, research and policy. It is an essential part of the global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) knowledge exchange architecture.

• January 2020 experienced the highest number of visits of all time to the SuSanA Forum. For page actions (user clicking on links and buttons in the Forum) three of the top 10 months of all time were recorded in 2020.

• The SuSanA Forum has proved to be a trusted go-to source of information, links and questions and answers in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

• The introduction of moderators from the Global South has enriched and diversified the online discussion and has added significant value to the users of the Forum. They have been mentored very competently by the head moderator.

• The introduction of the “Equity and Inclusion” category has been a positive step in making issues around gender, inclusion, integrity and poverty more visible. While there has been some member engagement, it will take more to increase the amount of activity further.

• A forum user survey and a member analysis were carried out over a 2-month period in the middle of the year to identify improvements to the forum setup and moderation, especially with the overall aim to increase engagement of members from the Global South and making it easier for them to share information.

• For the first time, the gender ratio of SuSanA members and their location (clustered into Global North or Global South) was determined and disaggregated into posts by category. This analysis will serve as a baseline for future targets of gender ratio and North-South balance. It was found that only 36% of SuSanA members are female; correspondingly, 36% of posts are made by females. Furthermore, members from the Global South wrote only 34% of all posts - even though 67% of members are from the Global South. This means there are less posts per person for Global South members compared to Global North members.

• The Forum website improvements were made based on feedback from users, both from a survey and from usage data. Bugs were also fixed as they were identified or reported.

• The SuSanA Forum compared favourably to the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) online communities and was significantly more active than RWSN during 2020.

• WSSCC staff made good use of the Forum to share information and to exchange with SuSanA members, although activity declined in the latter part of the year as the transition to the Sanitation and Hygiene Fund gathered pace and the workload for WSSCC staff members probably increased significantly.

• Forum sign-up data indicates that many WSSCC members, who were not already registered, moved across to SuSanA in late 2019 early 2020.

• The SuSanA Forum can make a significant contribution the SHF Strategy (2021-2025) by establishing the SHF Strategy’s visibility among WASH professionals in SHF’s inception phase.

• The Forum can be used in future to encourage peer-to-peer learning among SHF grantees who can share their experiences and questions to the community.

Project Team and report reviewers F. Volk, E. von Muench, F. Volk, C. M. Sanderse, P. ChhajedPicha, N. C. Mong’ina Maua

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So, looking back at 2020 we think it was a good and successful year for the SuSanA Discussion Forum. Now we look at 2021 and have a small problem: Again we are looking for a funder to financially support the moderation of the discussion forum. We are back to the deliberations and discussions we started in late 2018:
Your opportunity to secure and shape the future of the Discussion Forum?

If anyone has hot tips or suggestions for this please do get in touch.
 
Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear SuSanA members

Last year WSSCC provided a grant to support this Forum before it was closed down. It was used to support the introduction of Equity and Inclusion as a category, introducing new moderators and a whole lot more. 
If you want to find out more, take a look at my report: www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource...library/details/4064

Sean

Dear All,

This is just to give a farewell as a co-moderator on this forum as my contract has come to an end. I hope that for all the people that I interacted with, I made a positive impact and was able to push you to feel warm, welcome and appreciated with the posts, emails and comments that you posted. As another moderator comes on board, I want to welcome her and hope that you will accord her the same support.
All the best and hope to still engage on this forum as I am still a SuSanA member.

Regards
Charlotte

Dear all,
I would also like to inform you that I am the other co-moderator . I would like to take this opportunity to thank the SuSanA secretariat for giving me this opportunity to work as a co-moderator in this forum. I therefore take this chance to introduce myself.
I am currently working as a freelance consultant in WASH projects. I am based in Nairobi, Kenya. I have a 10-year experience in WASH especially in the East African set up. My expertise is mostly in Social and Sanitation Marketing, awareness creation and sensitization of sanitation projects as well as attitudes and behavior change. I was previously engaged in the UBSUP programme in Kenya which was key in improving household sanitation in urban low income areas. You can read about it in the link below:
forum.susana.org/167-market-development-...kenya?start=12#22722

I am elated to be able to moderate this forum which I believe has a rich collection of knowledge that pertains to projects that are making a huge impact globally.
Looking forward to more interactions and a pleasant time.
Regards
Charlotte

Hello everyone
I am pleased to inform that I am one of the two people selected to support Elisabeth as co-moderator of this forum.* I am a researcher currently based in Mumbai, India. I am pursuing PhD from CTARA at IIT-Bombay, the broad area of research being governance for wastewater management in small towns. I am particularly looking at the processes involved in planning and implementing city-wide FSM services. I am also interested in the delivery of other basic services, their governance, decision-making processes and equity-related issues.

I am an urban planner by training and worked with Performance Assessment System ( www.pas.org.in ) for 4 years where I was involved in city sanitation planning especially understanding and preparing financial plans, developing excel based planning and decision support tools, toolkits, benchmarking of services, among others. You can read about it in the link below:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/183-mo...niversity-india#9784

I look forward to interacting with you 😊

Regards
paresh

* See here for selection process: forum.susana.org/20-jobs-consultancies-i...tions-closed-results

I am happy to report a first visible impact of this renewed and formalised collaboration between WSSCC and SuSanA:
In December we received more new SuSanA members than in any previous month before.

This is visible for all to see here: forum.susana.org/forum/statistics

Or see this graph:


We put this down to the member newsletter and posts by WSSCC on their Facebook and Twitter pages where they encouraged their members to also join SuSanA with the following words:

This merging of discussion platforms will enable you, as a WSSCC member, to access and interact with an even more diverse global community of sanitation practitioners. The Community of Practice on Sanitation and Hygiene in Developing Countries (CoP) will close by the end of 2019. Therefore, we are now encouraging all WSSCC members to register with SuSanA. Registration is simple; visit www.susana.org/en/register and fill out the short form.

Nice!

Elisabeth

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is excited to announce the merger of its Community of Practice on Sanitation and Hygiene in Developing Countries (CoP) with the SuSanA discussion forum.

This merger will enable WSSCC members to access and interact with an even more diverse global community of sanitation practitioners. This new partnership among WSSCC, SuSanA and Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) at Skat Foundation is key to expanding the community’s focus on equality and non-discrimination, menstrual hygiene and health (MHH), and rural behaviour change programming.

We hope that our members will continue to actively share their knowledge in this growing learning community so that together, we can elevate unheard voices, confront stigmas and barriers, enhance accountability systems, and achieve sanitation and hygiene services for those left behind.

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Note by moderators: This post was made by a former user with the login name WSSCC who is no longer a member of this discussion forum.