Dear all,

On Friday, February 27th, the last day of the 3-week thematic discussion came to a close, with over 60 detailed posts on the “Sanitation Ladder: Next Steps” discussion, on topics such as: alternative and complementary ideas to a sanitation ladder; implications of the SDGs and a functional sanitation ladder, particularly in terms of including equity, human rights and gender in the framework; defining “safe” sanitation; and adopting the functional sanitation ladder!

Thank you to the participants and thematic leads!
We would particularly like to thank the many posts and contributions from SuSanA members on the forum, and the Thematic Leads, Patrick Bracken, Elisabeth Kvarnström and Ricard Gine, for contributing their time and knowledge to lead and engage in the discussion, sharing responses to questions and ideas, and keeping the discussion stimulating, relevant, and up-to-date with the current happenings in the global processes.

In particular, thank you to Patrick for his role in organising the contributions from the leads and providing background knowledge on the functional sanitation ladder, Elisabeth for her awareness of current processes and linking to other ongoing discussions, and to Ricard for his thought-provoking considerations for the sanitation ladder, especially related to the SDG targets.

What’s Next?
A summary of Week 3 will be posted shortly, and a synthesis document will be prepared by the secretariat and leads and posted in the next few weeks. The synthesis document will take into consideration posts made in the thematic discussion up until today. Although posts after today will not be included in the summary or synthesis documents, we hope to keep the conversation going on the Forum, particularly of practical adaptations and implementation of the functional sanitation ladder.

The links to the three weekly topics are:
Week 1: Evolution of the Sanitation Ladder
Week 2: The post-2015 agenda and emerging monitoring challenges in the sanitation sector
Week 3: The way forward…adaptation of the sanitation ladder to the post-2015 period

The synthesis will be around 5-10 pages, and can be used as a sharing document. As Sowmya has mentioned in her post forum.susana.org/forum/categories/185-th...st-2015-period#12294, the need a sharing document for the current global processes is crucial. Once the synthesis document is prepared, perhaps Sowmya’s detailed outline for a Recommendations Report can also be revisited by SuSanA members to expand on the synthesis.

Sharing Webinar
As Patrick mentioned, the thematic leads will review the information from the discussion and synthesis, and then check back with SuSanA at the end of March with a webinar. To quote Patrick:

Our aim is to produce a new version of the functional ladder that may be of use to implementers, providing them with a clear reference framework for their interventions and for monitoring, which conforms to the demands of the SDGs. We hope to have this review completed by mid-March and to return to the SuSanA group for further discussions, particularly within the framework of a webinar on the updated functional around the end of March.

The exact date for the webinar is currently TBD, but we will announce the date and registration info asap.

Feedback
As this Sanitation Ladder discussion was the first thematic discussion that SuSanA has hosted in the new Thematic Discussion Series (TDS), we would like to also have the opportunity for feedback on this first thematic discussions. We would welcome feedback here in this thread.

You may wish to include feedback on topics such as:
- What did you/ did you not find helpful?
- What did you like/ didn’t like?
- What would you like to see in future discussions?
- How did you feel about the format on the discussion forum?
Ex. length of time, use of the categories in the discussion forum, separation of the weeks, summaries etc.

Once again, we would like to extend many thanks to the participants who were engaged in the discussions and provided well-thought and quality posts, questions, criticisms and ideas. And many thanks to the Thematic Leads who actively engaged in the topic and provided detailed responses and posts, towards making this a productive and topical discussion.

Kind regards,

Roslyn