Regional
stories
Enhancing access to sanitation in rural Indonesia
SWG are small, scalable sewage treatment systems for individual households or community centres such as schools. GWP Southeast Asia trained community leaders and volunteers in three villages on Bintan Island to use the e-survey platform to assess the sanitation needs of households. The training also covered the importance of access to, and what constitutes, proper and safe sanitation. Survey results were used to help understand the existing situation in each village, determine the location for pilot installations of a SWG, and inform decision-making on village planning, budgeting for WASH programmes, and other community initiatives.
As part of the project, the communities are trained to install a SWG in selected households. This gives them the knowledge required to scale up the initiative within the villages. The villages also become knowledge centres for the SWG programme, so it can be replicated across the local area and in Indonesia more widely.
Water Academy for Youth training offered
Youth aged 18 to 35 years had the chance to take part in online training in 2022 as part of GWP Southeast Asiaโs Water Academy for Youth (WAY), which aims to accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), improve the skills of young leaders, and strengthen youth participation in water decisions. The WAY promotes leadership, capacity building, mentoring, networking, and intergenerational dialogue, and offers fellowships and internships to eligible youth.
Eighteen participants โ two from each of the GWP Southeast Asia countries โ were chosen to take part in the training. Collaborative and immersive learning techniques based on design thinking help give young people the knowledge and experience they need to make connections to decision-makers, practitioners, and senior water leaders and take action on SDG implementation through water. The programme, which can be customised to different regions, focuses on four key elements:
- Leadership and skills
- Locally centred learning and capacity building
- Scenario planning and problem-solving
- Mentorship, solution transfer, and intergenerational knowledge sharing.
Improving the coordination of actions to support integrated water resources management
The lack of a single platform that captures the current situation and offers a way of engaging with, coordinating, promoting, and aligning actions and investments is considered the central obstacle to implementing an integrated approach to water resources management, something that is vital to achieving a water secure world by 2030.
In response, GWP Southeast Asia brought stakeholders together in September 2022 for a regional workshop to seek their support for an integrated multistakeholder water security open programme. The programme would offer dedicated support and help ensure the alignment and coordination of actions to achieve water security goals through implementing the principles of integrated water resources management.
The workshop also sought input from stakeholders to improve the design of a shared action mapping and alignment platform to support the water security open programme.
