Dear all,
I would like to give you an update on the 15th SuSanA meeting planned in conjunction with the Africa Water Week in Cairo in May.

We from the SuSanA core group are currently involving ourselves in the organisation of the sanitation sessions of the main program, looking at where SuSanA partners or members can make meaningful inputs.

There will be 2.5 days of sessions with the following four themes running in parallel (note these are working titles only) - for SuSanA theme 1 is most relevant:

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

1. Water and Sanitation for Development
Lead Conveners: Further Advancing the Blue Revolution Initiative (FABRI)
Co Conveners: WSP Africa, Gates Foundation, Water Aid, Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA)
Contact: Peter Reiss (PhD)
Development Alternatives, Inc.

2. Infrastructure for Growth and Climate Resilience
Lead Conveners: African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) - hosted by UNECA & African Union Commission (AUC)
Co Conveners: UN Water – Africa, Global Water Partnership (GWP), African Development Bank (AfDB) Programme on Climate, Infrastructure Consortium for Africa- Water platform (ICA)
Contacts
Dr Seleshi Bekele, UNECA-ACPC

3. Private Sector Investment in Sanitation and Water
Lead Convener: World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Co Conveners: Coca-Cola and African Water Association (AfWA)
Contact to be given

4. Water Governance and Financing
Lead Conveners: Global Water Partnership (GWP), African Development Bank (AfDB)
Co Conveners: African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW), European Water Initiative – Africa Working group (EUWI-AWG),
Contact: Alex Simalabwi
Global Water Partnership (GWP)
Stockholm, SWEDEN
++++++++++

As part of theme 1 there are probably around 6 sanitation sessions.
It is a great opportunity for SuSanA to be involved in giving input to these sessions!

So far, I know of the following SuSanA core group members who have said that they will attend: Dorothee Spuhler, Johannes Heeb, Darren Saywell, myself, Philipp Feiereisen, Halidou Koanda (+ Philippe Reymond for seecon).

Please tell us if you are also going to be there so we can align ourselves as a SuSanA group upfront. Please use Doodle for this and add your own name if you wish to indicate your attendance or non-attendance:
www.doodle.com/6e3z5uwzrh7t96xe

The other side of the coin is that we are probably not having a "big" SuSanA meeting before the Africa Water Week (contrary to our previous announcements). This is because:

1. We have been unable to find a local host in Egypt
2. Very few SuSanA core group members are planning to attend (and probably also few SuSanA members?)
3. It may not be necessary to have our "own" meeting if we are part of the main program.

This is also what Arno Rosemarin suggested:

What about integrating the non-business part of the SuSanA mtg into the AWW programme? So any content arising from SuSanA members, the working groups, publications summaries, etc. would go seamlessly into AWW sessions. Then the SuSanA business meeting can be held one of the evenings eg Tuesday 15 May – which would be open to any interested parties attending AWW. Sound doable?

Thus, our current thinking is to have perhaps a small internal SuSanA meeting some time in parallel to the main program (e.g. in the evening or on the evening before the AWW starts). This would mean people attending the AWW would not have to arrive an extra 2 days early for the SuSanA meeting.

This is our current way of thinking. I do hope to see a few of you there in Cairo!? (we will of course also do our best to use the internet for "virtual participation" during or after the event).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear all,

today it was confirmed that the Africa Water Week 2012 will take place in Egypt from 20-24 May 2012. The SuSanA Meeting would possibly take place just prior the Africa Water Week (18-19 May).

The local host has to be confirmed.

How are your plans? Are you planning to go to the AWW 2012? Are you joining us the next SuSanA Meeting?

Cheers,
Philipp

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

I like the idea of Sunder for "regional SuSanA meetings". These can actually quite easily be organised by any SuSanA partner who wants to connect it to some other event they are perhaps hosting. From the secretariat we could possibly give some support (in terms of content, connections, advertising), although no financial support. As much as possible, any event should then also be broadcast via the internet with whatever means available so that people can take part remotely.

Dear Trevor,
Great to hear about your progress with SAWASA!
I am sorry to disappoint you, but unfortunately, I see no chance of a proper, big SuSanA meeting in South Africa in 2-3 months time. But have you thought about making it into a regional SuSanA meeting? We could help you with that e.g. developing the agenda, spreading information about it and helping you find interesting speakers. There is the South African Knowledge Node on Sustainable Sanitation which could easily contribute. See here:
www.afrisan.org/

There are also good people in Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe,... However, the issue will be their travel costs, since they would have to cover that by themselves. So the event must be attractive enough for them to come. But for South Africans at least, hopefully it should be easy to manage.

The reasons why I say that a big proper SuSanA meeting is not possible is because:

• It is not linked to an international event which people have funding to go to anyway
• It is too short notice
• It would be the second SuSanA meeting in sub-Sahara Africa in a row (the last one was in Rwanda) - this also speaks against having the 15th meeting together with World Toilet Summit in Durban in November

The current thinking here at the SuSanA secretariat is actually to have the 15th SuSanA meeting in connection with the Africa Water Week in Egypt, about second half of May (date and venue für the Africa Water Week are not yet finally confirmed; we are in touch with AMCOW about this). This would mean our first SuSanA meeting in the MENA region, which is exciting (we actually have no SuSanA partners with their headquarters in the MENA region; although some SuSanA partners are active there of course).
(MENA stands for Middle East and North Africa).

What do others think about this option?

Dorothee: if you are in Marseille for the World Water Forum, perhaps you could find out via the WG 1 mailing list who else will be there and have a small SuSanA event perhaps - even just a meeting of WG 1 could be interesting. Depending on which other SuSanA members will be there. (perhaps start a new discussion thread on this?)

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Friends

South African Water and Sanitation Academy(SAWASA)has finally been given a go ahead by World Toilet Organization under the licence of World Toilet College based in Singapore headed by Mr Jack Sim. SAWASA is now officially the African Chapter of World Toilet College. I have been appointed the first principal and president of SAWASA and the board consists of 5 members who are Cleopas Zulu, Ismail Kalla, Gerrie Theron, Haroon Aziz and myself, Trevor Mulaudzi. We intend to launch SAWASA during late February or early March 2012 in Durban, South Africa. Mr Jack Sim and delegation from World Toilet Organization will grace this occassion while at the same time they will be here to inspect the venue of 2012 World Toilet Summit, which will be coming to Africa for the very first time. SAWASA invites all of you at SuSanA to come to Durban to join us at this important event in Africa and at the same time we can have the 15th SuSanA meeting together. You are now being invited to be with us during February or early March 2012 for the SAWASA launch and 15th SuSanA meeting. We are currently working out the dates which will be suitable to everybody. We request that you also suggest dates for us as SuSanA family. Hoping to hear from you all soon with feedback messages. Thanking you in advance.

SAWASA will be an African Toilet and Sanitation College which will teach modern toilet technology, plumbing, public toilets cleaning and maintenance, water conservation, and all related topics in Water and Sanitation as a way of introducing new skills to the youth and women of Africa.

Trevor Mulaudzi
SAWASA Principal

Re next SuSanA meeting, my involvement in sustainable sanitation started for me with somewhat accidental attendance at the one in Delhi in 2007 and I want to go to another one.

First choice would be before or after World Toilet Summit in Durban. (At last, it's in Africa. A couple of us hope to attend. We need at least 9 mo lead time to raise funds.) But what would be really good would be to have video conference possibilities. The University of Oregon would probably facilitate participation by people here. (We just got a tiny grant for a fall 2012 video exchange between civic leaders and emergency officials in Portland and Christchurch. I'll let you know how that shapes up.)

I also think a virtual meeting can not replace a meeting where people meet physically, what gives them lots of possibilities to exchange and interact during all the time beside the official programme.
But of course (especially from a financial point of view) virtual meetings also have their advantages.
I like the idea of Juergento start with a test live stream from the next SuSanA meeting and then to see how it works. As Rahul suggested, working group meetings could be a good opportunity to gain experiences in virtual SuSana meetings - or maybe the event in Marrakech organised with Günter.
The Marrakech meeting (if it takes place) could also be an opportunity to assess the need for regional SuSanA chapters as suggested by Sunder (I recently read about the German Water Partnership which is organised in regional section and had the impression this was quite successful, but don't have any personal experience with this organisation).

But for my point of view, these event should not replace a "big" south meeting.
I do (unfortunately) not have a new suggestion at the moment.
I hear that LatinoSan was sheduled for 2013 and not for 2012. Singapor would be in Asia (which would follow up with Latin America 2010 and East Africa 2011), but attendance form Latin America will probably be very small.

I will be in Marseille, if a meeting/event is going to be organised there, I can give my support.

Cheers

Dorothee

Yes Indeed.... I agree with Elisabeth. Travel and accommodation costs, especially if your bill isn't being taken care of by a parent or sponsoring organization can be very difficult for many, and as she rightly points out, this may be true even within some countries, let alone international travel.

Also (thinking aloud!), I now wonder if we ought to think of holding SuSanA meetings in events where there is a higher likelihood of people participating, regardless of where they are from, as opposed to region focussed meets. For example, folks from Asia are unlikely to attend the Marakech event (unless of course they are part of a organization that has a stake and would like to sponsor them, or if they have substantive personal/professional interests in African regional issues). This then brings me to another question.... wondering if at some point, one might want to think of regional SuSanA chapters....... and that would potentially have much higher likelihood of participation in meetings etc.....

Cheers,

Sunder

I agree with both the point of views. But for now we still dont have much experience organising online meetings. So I think the working group meetings are something we could start experimenting with online meetings to get acquainted with. Once we have found the online platform that suits us best we could then organise a SuSanA Plenary meeting online.

cheers

Rahul

Dear Günter,
Sounds interesting. Do you mean something like a SuSanA side event or seminar and a booth perhaps? We from the SuSanA secretariat could support you in that.

Is anyone else who reads on this forum going to this event in Marakach in February?

By the way, I wanted to react to something that Philipp wrote:

Not everyone has access to good internet connection, the skills to participate or the will to sit in front of the screen to follow a virtual conference.

That is true but one can also say: Not everyone can afford an airline ticket and the accommodation to fly to an event and attend it unless it takes place in one's own country (and even then an airline ticket might be needed, depending on the size of the country).

So yes, face-to-face meetings are certainler nicer and better in an ideal world, but they are overall also much more expensive and exclude all those who are not working for financially-strong organisations (most of SuSanA's partner organisations are actually local NGOs, see the partner mapping on the SuSanA website). In the past, we have tried to overcome this to some extent by offering travel scholarships. These were e.g. provided by GIZ and SEI. But the SEI EcosanRes Programme is finished now and thus financial resources for such travel scholarships most likely much smaller from the Swedish side. Also from GIZ side we could not sponsor more than e.g. 5 people which is like a drop in the ocean. So unless we get other SuSanA partners being able to sponsor people, it comes back to the fact that people working for organisations with low income (or students, other individuals) cannot attend.

And I haven't even started talking about CO2 emissions which are caused by flights to SuSanA meetings...

But I do agree with what people said above that online meeitngs (Webinars) are difficult to arrange in a way that people really participate and don't get distracted with their other tasks. And that if we do a face to face meeting we should in parallel broadcast it as much as possible over the internet (however, often the internet access is quite poor in the locations, as we pick low-cost venues - so live streaming is next to impossible).

Regards,
Elisabeth

I could help with planning of an event at the 16TH African Water Association Congress from 20-23 Feb 2012, Marrakech, Morocco.
The organiser is ONEP and they are partner in one of my projects.
However, we would need a quick decision.
Best regards,
Guenter

Meetings are not only about sharing powerpoint slides and papers but more like having interaction, discussions and, also important, conversions beside the work topics. Not everyone has access to good internet connection, the skills to participate or the will to sit in front of the screen to follow a virtual conference.

Past SuSanA meetings have shown that real life events help us to bring interested people together, allow us to learn from the experiences of others and to have productive working group session. It makes it easier to be part of a group and to contribute if you know at least some of the people behind the SuSanA working groups, members and partners.

From my point of view SuSanA meetings are important to keep on working along the same line towards sustainable sanitation, which is actually the aim of SuSanA. I personally vote for a real SuSanA meeting preferred outside Europe as long as we have the SuSanA meeting in Stockholm (thanks to SEI).

Looking forward to meeting you in person soon!


Btw. how about the Singapore International Water Week in July 2012?

We should still keep option 3 in mind for the future because it's just so much more convenient and saves a lot of energy/resources/funds having a pure online event, also with regard to the sustainability factor and the chance to record these sessions if required.

Also, there are enough places available with broadband connectivity, even in the southern hemisphere. Maybe not at an Internet Café, but at local tech hubs like the iHub.co.ke in EAK. In fact, I'd propose you test this with a live stream from the next SuSanA meeting and then we get to see if if works out or not. Or?