Invitation for all SuSanA members to come together (online) and celebrate and interact!

June 2015 is the month where SuSanA will meet an impressive milestone: 5000 SuSanA members (see here: forum.susana.org/forum/statistics )! In addition, another milestone achieved is that 100 sanitation projects funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been introduced on the SuSanA discussion forum. See here and filter by funding source: www.susana.org/en/resources/projects

To celebrate these two milestones, and to hear about your ideas for the future of the SuSanA network, we invite you to one hour of an “open microphone” webinar. The webinar will be held online on Thursday, 18 June at 16:00-17:00 CEST (Geneva time).

Webinar format:

Unlike conventional webinars there will be no formal presentations (apart from a short input by Trevor Surridge to set the scene). The webinar will give you the chance to speak to members of the SuSanA secretariat (Trevor Surridge, Annkathrin Tempel) and core group (Arno Rosemarin, Madeleine Fogde, Jonathan Parkinson, and Elisabeth von Muench) as well as to fellow SuSanA members.

The agenda is basically totally open and if you have additional ideas, other than those which I have listed below, please do put them as a reply in this thread.

From our perspective, we think the conversation could evolve around the following clusters of topics:

• Ask us what you have always wanted to ask
• Give us your advice on how to do things better
• The discussion forum (see also recent statistics report about the forum here )
• The SuSanA working groups ( www.susana.org/en/working-groups/overview )
• The Wikipedia WikiProject Sanitation ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation )
• The new project database ( www.susana.org/en/resources/projects )
• or even the future of the SuSanA network in general, including funding sources.

You can register for the webinar here:

www.susana.org/webinar-registration

Registration is optional but is useful as it will ensure that we can send you any last minute updates by e-mail.

The webinar is designed to be for SuSanA members only. You are not a SuSanA member yet? Fear not, it is fast and easy to register: www.susana.org/registration
You might even be the 5000th member if you register within the next two weeks...!

We very much look forward to meeting you all and to having a nice hour of interactions and sharing of ideas.

Elisabeth
with Trevor, Annkathrin, Arno, Madeleine and Jonathan


++++++++++

Instructions for attending the webinar (you don't need to download any software):

The webinar virtual room will open half an hour before the meeting starts, i.e. at 15:30 CEST. We highly recommend you arrive early to sort out any technical problems should they arise (and to book your seat as numbers are limited to 100).

At the right time on 18 June (use a time converter such as this one to find your local time: www.thetimenow.com/time-converter.php ),

simply go to:

seint.adobeconnect.com/seiwebinar/

You will see this screen by Adobe Connect:



Then you need to do the following:

• Click the little round circle where it says “Enter as a Guest”
• Enter your full name where it says "Name"
• Add the Room passcode which is webinar2015
• Click on the rectangular box which says "Enter Room"
• Wait a moment until the host (Arno) has granted you permission (if you encounter a problem at this step, simply e-mail me: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - I will look out for any stragglers)
• Make sure to have 5 MBit/s in bandwidth and headphones in order to use both webcam and sound.
• If you want to speak, you have to click on the green microphone button which you will find at the top left of the webinar screen, see screenshot below (see red circles):

One topic worth adding is that participants suggest new ideas for discussion threads and webinars.

Participants are encouraged to use their smartphones to join the webinar. Smartphones are more advanced than computers since they have good echo cancellation, handle Flash effectively and perform better at narrower bandwidths. Download the free Adobe Connect APP from iTunes or Android or even Blackberry.

www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect/apps...e-connectmobile.html

Dear Colleagues,

I shall be attending this Webinar and look forward to interacting with all of you. Arno thanks for the tip. I have successfully downloaded the app in my Iphone.

Best regards,

Doreen

Dear Elisabeth,

I'm afraid, I'll not be able to take part, as our Muslim month of fasting - Ramazan
( en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ramadan ) is starting on that day.

Could I kindly request that audio and video recordings of the event may be made, so that I (and, may be, many other forum users) can watch at convenient time.

Regards,

F H Mughal

Dear all !
I am really exited to be able to connect with you in this Webinar. I have worked with CapacityDevelopment in different sectors all my professional life so I am really looking forward to the chosen topic . With the Sustianable Development Goal Agenda ahead of us capacity development will be fundamental to reach the new targets. At AfricaSan a very interesting recent IWA report on the lack of capacity within the WATSAN sector in Africa was presented.: www.iwa-network.org/downloads/1422745887...crisis-wash-gaps.pdf
Furthermore the African Water Association called for partnership to support capacity development ! So how can we as a platform respond to the demands in a smart way? We cannot do this alone we need to be creative and to team up with knowledge institutions from different sectors etc
We need new bald ideas to address the lack of trained professionals!
Let us discuss and get inspired on Thursday
Hear from you then
Madeleine

Dear all,

Two more days until our first ever "open microphone" SuSanA webinar which gives you as a SuSanA member the chance to have your say and to ask your questions and to meet some fellow members!
I am really looking forward to it.

If you haven't registered yet, please do so here:
www.susana.org/en/webinar-registration

The webinar will take place here:
seint.adobeconnect.com/seiwebinar/

Make sure you also put it into your calendar so that you don't forget... And make sure you convert the time for your location ! I am listing here some example locations:

The webinar is at 16:00 Central European Summer Time (the online room opens already half an hour earlier). This is:

Seattle, USA; Vancouver, Canada - 7:00
Austin, Texas, USA - 9:00
New York, USA - 10:00
Dakar, Senegal - 14:00
London - 15:00
Paris, Madrid, Berlin - 16:00
Johannesburg - 16:00
Nairobi - 17:00
Delhi - 19:30
Karachi - 19:00
Beijing - 22:00
Sydney - midnight

@Madeleine: I agree that capacity development is at the core of many of SuSanA's activities. So we can discuss how to improve our activities in that regard. Also it would be good to hear back from those who attended the last SuSanA meeting at AfricaSan4, like yourself, about the vibes from the meeting.

@Mughal: We thought about recording or not but decided now not to record the webinar in order to keep it all very relaxed and informal. It is meant to be the equivalent of having a coffee and chat together if we could to it in face-to-face mode...

Regards,
Elisabeth

I thought it might be useful to know who will be some of your discussants and fellow SuSanA members for this Thursday's webinar and what their involvement has been with SuSanA. In alphabetical order by first name:

Annkathrin Tempel (called Anne):



Anne is the "new kid on the block"; she joined GIZ and the SuSanA secretariat recently (March of this year); she will moderate the webinar. Anne is from Germany.

Arno Rosemarin:



Arno has been with SuSanA right from the start in 2007. Since then he has been a core group member. He works for Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden where he is a Senior Research Fellow. He has a keen interest and active involvement in the "phosphorus - the finite resource" scene. Arno's country of origin is Canada.

Jonathan Parkinson:



Jonathan joined SuSanA in about 2011 and has been leading SuSanA's working group 2 ("Finance and Economics") since around that time. He currently works for Oxfam in the UK and was previously an independent consultant and before that with the International Water Association. Jonathan is from the UK.

Madeleine Fogde:



Madeleine has been with SuSanA also from the very early days, since 2007. Since then she has been a core group member. She works for Stockholm Environment Institute where she is the Program Director of SIANI ( www.siani.se ) - therefore at the interface between agriculture and sanitation. Madeleine was working group lead of working group 1 (capacity development) for several years and has been active in working group 7 (Community, rural and schools (with gender and social aspects)). Madeleine is from Sweden, and spent 15 years in Mozambique where she implemented sanitation programs.

Trevor Surridge:



Trevor joined the SuSanA secretariat at GIZ in Germany almost exactly three years ago, and has been leading it since then. Trevor's country of origin is South Africa.

And myself (Elisabeth von Muench):



I joined SuSanA in 2008 which is when I started working for GIZ in Germany and started leading the SuSanA secretariat there. After leaving GIZ in 2012, I remained actively involved with SuSanA as a community moderator of the SuSanA discussion forum; my time for this is financed via a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Stockholm Environment Institute. Therefore, I work closely with Arno on the activities related to this grant. I am from Germany.

Dear all

Unfortunately I cannot join this webinar but would like to take up the suggestion of Madeline and highlight the potential of SuSanA and the SuSanA resources for capacity development.

I would like to particularly invite people being involved with capacity development to join this meeting and give their inputs on how we can support capacity development activities through SuSanA!
The representatives of research institutions, local governments, and NGOs can play the crucial role of channel the wealth of experiences from the network back into the practitioners daily life in the field

Some guiding questions for discussion may be:

- What kind of information, documents and other resources (online forum discussions, webinars, MOOCs) do you regularly use to improve your knowledge? What are you lacking?

- What kind of information and other resources from SuSanA are useful for you to develop capacity in your home-institutions / target group?

- What kind of information and other resources has your organization developed that could be interesting for other members of the group?

- Have you some particular experience with developing capacity on sustainable sanitation that you could share?

- Could you imagine your organisation becoming a regional hub for SuSanA knowledge sharing and dissemination and if yes, how could that happen?


Have a nice webinar!

Dorothee

Thank you! I will attend.

Great, looking forward to e-meet you, Bogdan. We have nearly 50 people registered for the webinar now which is great. The webinar will start in five hours and the excitement behind the scenes here at the SuSanA secretariat and core group is rising, as we do last minute preparations and advertising.

I copy here an e-mail that Carol McCreary from PHLUSH sent yesterday in response to Dorothee's post in this thread on Page 1:

++++++++++++

From: Carol McCreary
Subject: Open Mike Webnair on SuSanA Capacity Building
Date: June 17, 2015 at 9:37:34 AM PDT


This is a wonderful idea. Hayley Joelle Smith would like to attend and will be reporting back to PHLUSH. Hayley has special skills as a sustainable sanitation educator that we need here.

I doubt I can participate but I loved the focus that came from Dorothee’s questions.

Especially this one: - Could you imagine your organisation becoming a regional hub for SuSanA knowledge sharing and dissemination and if yes, how could that happen?

Thanks to what we have learned from SuSanA, to say nothing of SEI,eawag, & cewas, PHLUSH (Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human) is starting to be acknowledged as a platform for a wide range of sustainable sanitation issues. So, yes, as we consider our future and write a business plan that can sustain us, we have indeed considered becoming a regional hub for North America.

We have still in draft form this purpose statement: We address through education and advocacy, the need for urban public restrooms and for ecological sanitation, given the realities of drought, climate change, and documented seismic risk.

Interestingly, our national media attention comes from cities who are struggling with public toilet provision. You could say that urban poverty and houselessness are the fourth emergency we’re addressing: success here requires operationally and financially sustainable sewered and non-sewered amenities.

Please feel free to quote or to post. Sorry to always be in a hurry. Need to jump back on the boat to catch slack tide through Seymour Narrows, a difficult passage on the British Columbia coast. (More in blog.)

Best wishes,

Carol

Carol McCreary
S/V Aurora
503.984.4081
baggywrinkles.wordpress.com/

+++++++++++

Regards,
Elisabeth

Thank you for organizing this webinar, I would be glad to join and looking forward to saying hello to so many of you I have enjoyed interacting with and learnt so much from in the Forum. Thanks Arno for the post, I have downloaded the app.

I was disappointed that Chris, Mughal, Dorothee and Carol are not able to join because I always love to read their posts but I understand the prior commitments. This is special for Mughal, I will be going to a mosque during the Ramzan month and participate in the prayers with my friend (she is a Muslim and very nice). I read the Wiki page and hope that you receive all the blessings granted during the Ramzan month.

My apologies for this last minute post.

It would be great to focus on Madeline’s suggestion of increasing SuSanA’s role in capacity development (#13709 dated 15 June 2015). Loved Dorothee's questions and would be great to discuss them.

A couple of suggestions:
1. Training materials section: Would it be possible to organize the materials into courses with 1-page containing purpose, difficulty level, who for, URLs etc? We have so much material on our library. I have only read a few but, from what I have read so far, the documents are truly awesome! So, content for the courses is probably already available.

2. SuSanA courses on Coursera: Would it be possible to organize SuSanA course(s) on Coursera and other self-learning sites? With possibility to continue the discussion on SuSanA. Also, apart from core sanitation courses, the perspective of other SuSanA courses could be from the perspective of other sectors. Also explore how to link with other courses. For instance, a SuSanA course on how to start a sanitation business (which links to our Sanitation As A Business) and provide contents for a project report could link to the Business Administration courses on Coursera. Given present & future SuSanA’s mandate, it would be great to collaborate wherein SuSanA content (case studies, for instance) is included in modules of other courses (business administration, technology & society, other).

3. Course flyer: It would be great to have some 1-2 page flyers for courses organized on SuSanA Resources section. It is easier for people to forward the flyers than having to put together specific content.

At the World Toilet Summit held in New Delhi, India in January this year, a senior official from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Education Dept., Govt of India was amongst the panelists in one of the discussions. He spoke very encouragingly of sanitation in schools and also said that we could post some content on CBSE website if we want. One letter from him sent to at least a few schools would definitely have the school administration ensure their students have at least one session (or probably, enrol all their students on a short course and follow-up till completion). One letter from the Department of Education (State / Central / other) is all it will take for large-scale enrolment of school students & follow-up until course completion. Given the current enthusiasm for the Swacch Bharat Campaign (the national sanitation campaign), involvement of the Education Department would accelerate achievement of capacity development goals. My mother was a school teacher until her retirement and I know the Education Department as well as the schools take these matters seriously. Probably, the same can work for other countries as well.

For this to work, we need the content organized and a 1-2 page summary that the Education Department can enclose along with a letter. It is really wow that SuSanA is going to start its India chapter to participate in the Swacch Bharat Campaign. Taking this up with the Education Departments could be on the agenda. Similarly, a letter from the respective ministries to the respective govt agencies / public sector organizations for their employees to complete the course would ensure it gets done.

And it would be great if a course can be organized (with materials translated into regional languages - translation should not be a huge problem) which the national labour unions can take up. The labor unions have huge membership and have strong support of the members. If the labor union leaders take it up, we can reach population who might not be ordinarily reached through internet and other one-to-many or many-to-many communication / networking formats. The Central Govt started the ‘bank accounts for all’ programme and, within months, increased enrollment by huge numbers (I don’t have the stats at the moment but this is one of the govt’s success stories) - to give an idea of implementation capabilities of the govt. The State govts are also enthusiastic and would take this up.

So, it is important to have specific courses, downloadable in print-friendly version (low bandwidth, black & white instead of color, can be easily cyclostyled as this printing technology is still being used & is very low cost, hindi and each state’s home language) along with a flyer that can be enclosed with the letter from the govt departments / trade unions. A similar flyer can also be posted on student groups on social media / list servs.

Another suggestion linking to the above and SuSanA starting the India chapter to participate in the Swacch Bharat Campaign, it would also be great to discuss SuSanA’s organizational mandate in the context of the SDGs. Sanitation links with 10 other SDG goals. There has been a lot of emphasis on making the SDG goal-setting & negotiations as participatory as possible. This would also be followed up with making programme & resource planning, implementation, monitoring & evaluation as participatory as possible - this can only help with increasing transparency & reducing overall programme costs.

This is just a thought. Every person on this planet has to link with several SDGs because they are directly affected / direct participation is necessary. Additionally, the SDGs require high level of inter-sectoral collaboration. It would be very difficult if each person has to interact with several knowledge hubs, forums etc., to access all the info required for full participation in the SDGs achievement. What is, perhaps, more feasible is for one organization / forum to become the platform for a given SDG goal - it is much more easier for everyone to keep repeating the same forum name in all communication, and also make it possible to collate all the knowledge generated online. We would, of course, interact with all social media but everyone should know this: for sanitation, go to SuSanA; for health, go to HIFA2015. Well, SuSanA is "sanitation information for all"!

It would be great if the SDG website of the UN could list one forum / knowledge hub for all the SDG discussions for everyone to participate in - during the discussions and later (planning, implementation, M&E). This list should preferably have only one hub / forum per SDG goal. When the discussion of which forums etc comes up, SuSanA should be in a strong position to be considered as that forum. We already have huge membership (both individuals and organizations), knowledge resources, forum in which experts from all over the world participate very actively and with enthusiasm. We already have discussions in which other sector experts have been happy to participate (gender, ebola, health, to name a few), collaboration with other sector forums as well (SuSanA - HIFA2015) and interaction with other knowledge hubs (WikiDoc James from Wikipedia, for instance). It would be really great if we can develop a constructive plan for cohesive action for this purpose.

See you all at the Webinar!

Warm regards,

Sowmya

Dear Elisabeth;

First at all I would like to congratulate to the SuSanA leading team for the great work they are performing in particular for the open mic initiative that allow us to express our opinion straightforward.

In my participation I would like to highlight on the contribution of regional conferences on sanitation, such as Africasan, Sacosan, Latinosan, to put sanitation on the top of the development agenda at a top level. I believe that SuSanA could play an important role by systematizing best practices presented in each conference and editing a global document on sanitation. The document could become a guideline for policymakers, cooperation agencies, local governments and sanitation practitioners on the benefit of people with no access to improved and decent sanitation.

Best regards

Rafael Vera
Cochabamba - Bolivia