By Director of Program Spencer Bogle
I had the opportunity to represent The Water Project at World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden August 25 through August 30. World Water Week’s theme this year was Bridging Borders: Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future, focusing on cooperation for peace and security around water.
The conference convenes representatives and decision-makers at the highest levels of national governments, transnational organizations like the World Health Organization and World Bank, bilateral organizations like the US Agency for International Development, and NGOs like The Water Project, working in every corner of the globe. The conference recognizes that solutions to water-related challenges require incredible collaboration, whether on a local scale for a rural community working to build more resilient water access solutions, or for a national government actively pursuing the UN’s sustainable development goals.
This was The Water Project’s first appearance at the conference. One of the highlights for me was meeting collaborators with whom I have worked (some for years) and have never met face-to-face.
For instance, The Water Project is a proud member of The Millennium Water Alliance, an alliance of over 20 member organizations committed to increasing water resilience and sanitation access globally. I met with leaders and members of the alliance to discuss mission-critical topics for The Water Project, like improving our safe water delivery processes to healthcare facilities, best practices for expanding solar piped water services to a new program region, and making our operations and maintenance services more sustainable, ensuring that our networks of water access are around for the long haul.
I also met with other members of the WASH Funders Group, a collection of almost 30 organizations and foundations committed to collaboration, information exchange, and learning to achieve a greater collective impact in water and sanitation system strengthening around the world. Our meetings included a strategy session to improve coordination and collaboration, a session exploring how we could work together to support and strengthen an operations and maintenance framework in Uganda, and a session on catalytic sector financing, in which I had the honor of facilitating a table discussion with peers who brought decades of learning and experience to the conversation.
Of course, at a conference of this scale, there are countless sessions led by sector leaders convening experts on topics central to the pursuit of safe water access for all, strategies, and best practices. My time consisted of attendance at sessions like “Taking Stock in Systems-Stengthening Programming — Framing Qualitative Evidence.” During this session, the WASH Agenda for Change and the Rural Water Supply Network (of which The Water Project is a member) led a think shop addressing the reality that a shift in context, such as a new government policy, can greatly impact the relevance of activities planned to strengthen an entire system required to provide sustainable water access.
The session exchanged approaches and methods that provide diverse experiences and ideas on qualitatively measuring systems change. This is an important part within the system of water access in our program regions; The Water Project is always looking to improve our engagement with other local and regional stakeholders to build sustainability within the systems of water access from the first moment we engage a community. Sessions like this provide wonderful opportunities to engage directly with national and global leaders.
My main takeaway from the conference was an appreciation for the spirit of collaboration and cooperation that exists among so many of the people and organizations with whom I met. I have been in this work long enough to know many who have committed their lives to extending water access to those who are vulnerable and forgotten. I work in an office with 18 of them. I work with over 100 other leaders and practitioners within The Water Project Network based in Kenya, Uganda, and Sierra Leone.
The World Water Week Conference provided an opportunity to meet with many more of these like-minded, brilliant, and committed problem-solvers whom I consider friends because of their willingness to share wisdom, listen, incorporate lessons that we have learned, and creatively imagine a future where everyone has reliable access to safe water.
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