Announcement from 06.09.2017

Human Rights Speeding Dating: Léo Heller with the winners from AECID and KEWASNET

© 2017 Sean Furey • RWSN

Thank you to everyone who engaged with RWSN at this year's SIWI World Water Week. A few highlights included:

RWSN shared a small stand with the Water Integrity Network, which worked out well and is part of our growing cooperation.

There was a Human Right to Water & Sanitation Speed-Dating event at the UNICEF stand, hosted by Louisa Gosling (WaterAid/ENDI) and members of the Making Rights Real team, plus UN Special Rapporteur, Léo Heller.

There was an RWSN session on “SDG6: Searching for universal sustainability metrics for rural water services” on Wednesday afternoon which was in one of the larger halls and attendance was very good and nearly filled it. The session included audience live polling, presentations by IRC (Stef Smits), World Bank (Susanna Smets), UNICEF (Angie Saleh), WaterAid - Rwanda (Ellen Greggio), Nepal (Mr. Chandra Bdr. KC) and from Brazil (Alceu Galvao). The session was chaired by RWSN Chair Kelly Ann Naylor (UNICEF) with facilitation support from Antoinette Kome (SNV), with a final sum-up and thanks by Sean (Skat). A meeting the next day helped move the topic on to inform the RWSN strategy.

Sean Furey (Skat/Sustainable Groundwater Development theme) took part in a Swiss Water Partnership session on “Groundwater : a challenge for society”, convening a discussion group on groundwater for rural water supply.

On Friday, there was the annual face-to-face RWSN Executive Steering Committee meeting, which went smoothly and included a presentation on the draft final independent evaluation of RWSN and discussion of the next RWSN strategy. More details on both soon.

Overall it was a great team effort and we welcome ideas for future face-to-face networking activities and events.