Danka Thalmeinerova is Senior Knowledge Management Officer at the GWP global secretariat in Stockholm. She joined the global secretariat in 2008 but has a long history with GWP before that – both at regional and country level. In the on-going interview series to mark GWP’s 20th Anniversary, Thalmeinerova speaks about her job: “I did not envisage how inspiring but challenging this would be.”
Getting the GWP-CAf ready to successfully end the first period (2014-2016) of its regional strategy, also repositioning it to fit for the second half of the regional strategy and for 2030. Yes. But how? It is to answer this question that the GWP-CAf chair convened an extraordinary Steering Committee meeting. This meeting had as theme: “SDGs: Opportunities for changing and redefining the role and business model for GWP-CAf and the CWPs. It was held on June 30, 2016 in Douala, Cameroon.
The attendees to the meeting were the statutory steering committee members notably, 4 chairs of CWPs; Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo and Sao Tomé and Principe; the chair of the technical and Scientific Committee; the representatives of ECCAS and of basin organizations: CICOS; the delegates of Civil Society organizations (REFADD) and the players of water sector (SODECA); the GWP-O executive secretary as well as the GWP Southern Africa (GWPSA) executive secretary.
The overall objective of this extraordinary Steering Committee meeting was to reflect upon and propose a roadmap for the choice of the new host institution for GWP-CAf and to examine the different options of business model and governance for GWP Secretariat at country level in order to apply them in central Africa region.
Through different presentations on positioning the GWP network to fit for future 2030 and its implications as well as on the experience of governance and funding of GWP Southern Africa, the members of steering committee understood that the GWP network needed a double reforms
An internal change that will take into account the improvement of four domains (strengthening the country level; improving sustainability of financing; improving corporate knowledge management and learning and increasing Institutional performance) while external change will cope with a new global water institutional architecture.
The south-south initiative (GWPSA and GWP-CAf) based on experience sharing between regions permitted participants to go through the CWP governance, accreditation process and different managing options for CWP.
The Project Officer and GWP WA finance and administrative manager visited Niamey from 8 to 12 May 2016 to ensure that the CWP and its Host Institution have implented the recommendations issued in the audit report and are following the agreed management principles.
A regional water youth network was created by participants to the recent Youth for Water Conference organised by GWP Central America, Movimiento de Jóvenes por el Agua (Youth Movement for Water, MOJA) and La Ruta del Clima (The Climate Route) and supported by GWP South America, UNICEF-Nicaragua, Reforestamos Mexico, and IUCN.
Global Water Partnership Eastern Africa ( GWPEA)needs to develop a resource mobilization strategy and action plan due to the shift in responsibility for resource mobilization from global to regional and countries. More focus to leverage resource has been shifted to country level while the CWPs do not have capacities. GWP’s role needs to be very visible to development partners and show actual investment on the ground.
The University of Ljubljana hosted the first SANDANUBE workshop on 19-20 April in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Its goal was to define the parameters of a full scale project proposal on sustainable sanitation in Central and Eastern Europe.
The University of Ljubljana hosted the first SANDANUBE workshop on 19-20 April in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Its goal was to define the parameters of a full scale project proposal on sustainable sanitation in Central and Eastern Europe.