Reflecting on the Access to Drinking Water Webinar: Co-creation in Africa #SDG6
From Pakistan to Mozambique and from Sweden to Bangladesh, over 100 participants joined the Access to Drinking Water Webinar: Co-creation in Africa #SDG6 on 26 November 2020. The various backgrounds of the participants confirmed that online events can have great benefits as well. We would like to thank all the speakers and participants for making this webinar such a big success!
The event kicked off with an introduction by Dr. Doris van Halem, scientific director of the TU Delft | Global Drinking Water programme. In her keynote presentation, Dr. Priti Parikh, Associate Professor at University College London, addressed the need to invest in WASH to reach the SDGs. Fatma Awale, former Minister of Water in Mombasa Country, Kenya, presented on the water sector in Kenya and Africa at large. 3 PhD students presented their #Co-creation pitches, which resulted in many interesting questions and a great discussion, moderated by Sophie Oostelbos from TU Delft | Global Initiative. More input and participation from the audience was given during the break-out sessions, in which Dr. Sergio Salinas from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Dr. Frank van Laerhoven from Utrecht University and Dr. Edo Abraham from TU Delft were leading the discussions about different water related topics. The PhD pitches and the slides from the keynote presentations can be downloaded via the links below.
A festive item on the agenda was the Best Paper Award Ceremony 2020! Congratulations to Dr. Nadia Binte Jamil, who won the €2,000 reward as first author of the article ‘Effectiveness of Different Approaches to Arsenic Mitigation over 18 Years in Araihazar, Bangladesh: Implications for National Policy', published in Environmental Science & Technology in 2019. The Best Paper Award is sponsored by TU Delft | University Fund. Link to article: https://lnkd.in/eJVJP7C.
The review committee of this award, consisting of Dr. Tanvir Ahmed (BUET), Dr. Marco Schouten (VEI), Dr. Manuel Alvarinho (Aquashare), Jan Heeger (Red Cross), Dick Bouman (Aqua for All), Dr. Luis Guillermo Romero Esquivel (TEC) and Dr. Doris van Halem (TU Delft), proclaimed this paper as the winner. Cited from their review report:
– ‘This is a paper with impact, also beyond academia. It shows evidence-based research and the connection with policy makes it strong. The complete puzzle is shown, not just one part.’
According to the jurors, the winning study goes beyond academic research or lab work, and was described as ‘an elegant applicable intervention’. An important paper with a strong empirical basis with a conclusion with great value for practice. Moreover, the jurors all agreed that the paper was very well-written, easy to read and were charmed of the used visuals. Want to know more about this research? Take a look at Nadia’s presentation via the link below.
During the event, the presentations and discussions were visualized live by a visual artist from Flatland Agency. The result is an infographic containing the key points discussed during the webinar. Feel free to use the visual notes, but please refer to TU Delft | Global Drinking Water if you do so.