The online intensive four hours meeting was hosted by GWP SAS Regional Office and facilitated by the Chair, GWP South Asia. Both Regional Council members (one member each from Bhutan and Pakistan), Country Water Partnership Chairs (except the Chair, GWP Pakistan), Senior Network Officer (SNO) for GWP South Asia and Regional Coordinator participated the meeting. The Country Coordinators attended as observers while Communications Coordinator acted as the Technical Host of the meeting.
Given the COVID 19 pandemic, the meeting held online from 2-6.10pm (Mumbai Time) still accommodated its regular interactive sessions, including introduction, programme update, financial report and audit 2019, 2021 programming and GWP South Asia governance and administration. Since the meeting was held online, the Regional Office made every effort to share the relevant documentations with the Regional Council in advance for reference and time was allocated in between for comments and discussions for participants.
Session on “how to adopt our work under present COVID context and identify success factors to make change happen in this environment?” was facilitated by Daniella Gaillard-Picher, the SNO where all the participants were divided into four breakout groups and given time for reporting in a plenary. The key points discussed at the session were the flexibility for adaptation, importance of strong network locally to continue field operations and hygiene and health of targeted groups, capacity building through knowledge products but not using the conventional methods – use hybrid approach and consider everyone does not have the same capacity to use technology to make the new approaches are inclusive. Finally, it was discussed that enhanced financial capacity cannot be overlooked in this given context to make a visible change.
Dani, at her closing speech emphasised that we need to communicate better with each other to get a good picture of the dynamics of GWP without being stick to our own ideas and thoughts. She as the SNO of GWP South Asia is prepared to listen to ideas and suggestions coming from the region and look for the best way that she could to incorporate those to the progress of the Regional Water Partnership. Highlighting her observation of the day, she concluded her speech “South Asia Regional Water Partnership has the potential to go for much greater achievements”.
The Regional Chair, Dr Nilufa Islam closed the meeting emphasizing the importance of making a change by working together and informed the RC that hopefully as it has been suggested during the last meeting we all can meet again physically in the next year at a common and accessible place to all the Country Water Partnerships.