Bye-bye World Water Week 2023, we are thrilled about our participation in another fruitful and inspiring edition of this world-leading conference on global water and sanitation issues.

We are particularly excited to have welcomed the crowd, on two occasions, at the Netherlands Pavilion. On the 22nd of August, we hosted a panel discussion and networking event entitled: “Financial innovation to unlock universal access to WASH: stories from the field”. Together with our partners from Take-a-Stake Fund and WASTE, we explored what type of partnerships are needed, which multi-stakeholder approaches have been tested, what lessons have we learned, and how we are scaling up to unlock universal access locally. We had some fantastic conversations around building a sustainable WASH service chain and private sector capacity building with our panelists Carolina Latorre and John Mathai from WASTE and Stephen Birungi and Pamela Kabasinguzi from FINISH Mondial.

On the 23rd of August, we presented what we do and what we’ve achieved so far, together with Take-a-Stake Fund. Our Supervisory Board Chair, Sarbani Bhattacharya and the Executive Director of WASTE, Kajetan Hetzer, spoke about how to catalyse private capital for WASH and how to foster a global sanitation revolution through financial inclusion. Special thanks to the Government of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Water Partnership for hosting us.

We were also very happy to catch up with the SATO by Lixil team and participate in their session entitled: “Partnering to innovate sustainable sanitation solutions in water scarce areas”, on the 22nd of August. Our Uganda country coordinator, Pamela Kabasinguzi, joined the panel discussion and explored the instrumental role of collaborations that lead to greater financial inclusion and scale while addressing diverse local WASH challenges. A very rich session about shared value partnerships, the importance of finding non-traditional partners and engaging the private sector. 

This year’s conference was placed under the theme “Seeds of Change: Innovative Solutions for a Water-Wise World”. We look forward to seeing the seeds planted this year blossom!

You can also find us featured in this article on the Dutch commitments to the UN Water Action Agenda presented at Stockholm World Water Week.