 Good afternoon, good morning, good evening to all of you and welcome to the YWP Get Together. Our topic today is Young Water Professionals Intergenerational Stories and we'll be discussing entrepreneurship and wash. This Get Together is organized by the YWP Steering Committee. So you have here in the slides the photos of all the members of the Steering Committee. They will be representing the IWA Young Water Professionals community from 2022 to 2024. And if you want to join the community and learn more about the Young Water Professionals and what IWA is doing for them, I invite you all to scan the QR code and follow our activities there. Next, before we start the webinar, just some quick information about it. This event is being recorded and it will be available on demand in our website, similar to the presentation slides and any other material and information that the speakers want to share with the participants today. The speakers are also responsible for securing copyright permissions and everything that is presented here are sole responsibility of the speakers. So now the trick part of it. If you want to make questions for the panelists, I ask that you submit this question via the Q&A box so you can check in your own application, the Q&A box. So please use it to send questions to the panelists. And if you want them to know your name, you can also write your name there. So for example, my name is Zabala and I have a question for Dr. Abigail and she will know that this question is from me directly to her. And the chat box is for general requests and interactive activities. So feel free to present yourself, say where you're from, and even your expectations for this event. And for the participants, your microphones are muted and we cannot respond to the raise hand option. So without further delay, I will hand over to Jacob. Jacob is the chair of the YWP String Committee and he will be our moderator today. Jacob. Thank you, Zabala. It's nice to be here once again. So today we are going to hear from our speakers and we have here Dr. Abigail Wilson. She is a clinical pharmacist and co-founder of Infitec Lab, the water management company. Then we will hear from Dr. Thiago Bresani. He is director at Shenicharu and Bresani consultancy and training in sanitation. Then we will hear from Dr. Akane Mo'odon, the Africa strategy advisor at Lancaster Environment Center in Lancaster University in the UK. Then we will hear from Dr. Barry Liner, is the chief technical officer at the Water Environment Federation and facilitator at Unleashed Innovation Lab for the SDGs. So welcome again to all our speakers. So for agenda, we will have a poll, we will have the first presentation, then the second one, then the third and the fourth. Then we have another poll, you have a general discussion, a Q&A at the end of the presentation. Then you have final remarks and conclusions. Thank you. Next slide. So let's have our first poll. So are you a wash entrepreneur? In one word, you can state the challenges that young wash entrepreneurs face, but we've given you some options already, mentorship, technical support, funding, team management. So you can choose the one that best resonates with you. So you have two minutes to choose your options. Great. So we have about half of us being wash entrepreneurs. That is great. And the major challenge is funding followed by team management and technical support and mentorship. I'm sure by the time that we finish the presentations, we will have answers to most of our challenges. Next slide, please. Yes. So we will have the first presentation from Dr. Abigail Wilson. So Abigail, the floor is yours. All right. Thank you so much. And thank you so much IWA for giving me the opportunity to be here today and to represent Infotec Lab Ghana. And I'll be sharing what we have been working on as a business project, as a water sustainability project in Ghana. So you can go ahead and go to the next slide. So I'll be speaking on ending overflow of water storage tanks and then bridging and water engender gap. So this first video is going to tell you guys more about what we have done so far and who we are as a water sustainability company. You can go ahead and play the video. Yeah. To ensure regular availability of water, individuals spend approximately $4,000 in larger communities through NGOs, local assemblies and philanthropists spend approximately 15,000 dollars to drill, complete the wells and have water pump and water storage tanks installed for them. After completion of this project, users usually get to know when their storage tanks are empty during situations when they need to use the water and then they attack on a running. They manually switch on their pumps to initiate the tank filling process and to know if the tanks are full, they are notified only when the tanks overflow, thereby causing them to lose water. It is sad to know that individual homes lose an average of 4,000 meters of water per month and larger communities lose averagely 35,000 meters of water per month due to the overflow of their water storage tanks. In providing convenience, preventing the frequent breakdown of water from systems due to the dry running of the tank and sending water to our end users, Interflabs Limited decided to design and manufacture aquasets. Hi, I am Obedzar, together with Mr. Fjord Yefanybe and Dr. Abigail Westby, which are the partners of Interflabs Limited. Along with our team in Ghana, we are the manufacturers of aquasets. Aquasets automate the pump actions so that it delivers the exact volume of water needed are determined by the user to fill their water storage tanks, thereby preventing the overflow of water storage tanks when full. It only interests you to note that since the inception of this project, aquasets have saved approximately 2.2 million liters of water with only 20 units deployed. Thank you so much, Jacob. You can go ahead to the next slide. So I think from the video, you guys have a good idea on who we are as Infitech Lab and then what our goals and our projects are about and what we've been able to do so far. So I would just recap that. So far in regards to ending overflow of water storage tanks and also bridging water and gender gap, we've been able to research homes. We did research homes about 100 homes and then universities and then schools in Ghana and basically since the launch of our water device, which is Aquaset water device, we've been able to save almost four million liters of water. For some reason, I'm not able to see the entire part of the slides, but we've been able to save that much water just by deploying few number of units of our water devices. So that is what we've been able to do so far. The next slide. And how does our water sustainability project or business impact economic and productivity transformation? So we are able to help prevent aquifier dryouts. We are able to ensure that there is constant water available to people in the community. We are also able to conserve water and also we educate members in the community and then in schools and universities, especially in Ghana, since they tend to use more of the water storage tanks, which in Ghana we call them poly tanks. Most of the institutions or high schools, university campuses, hospitals usually have poly tanks on their campuses, and that is where they get water from. So we take intentional steps to educate them on ways that they can also conserve water. And then we also prevent dry running of water pump systems, saving our users on average $45 on pump repairs annually, and also making sure that our water device ensures sustainability water withdrawal from the aquifier. So we can go ahead to the next slide. So in regards to gender and water, once we started a water device business or projects, we noticed that through research and engagements with our members in the community, in schools, in hospitals, we realized that the females were deeply affected by lack of access to water. So we had conversations with them and most of them will give us information about how water affects their personal hygiene as females. And most of us are already aware that when it comes to personal hygiene, women or females go through menstrual cycle phases, which doesn't happen for them men, right? And the UN, the United Nations has also established a research on this where it talks about how nearly 90% of homes in rural areas in Africa have no access to pipe water and collecting water for daily usage also weighs heavily on women. Now, when we did our research and engagements with the women in institutions and campuses, we realized that they came out with a higher number talking about how they cannot afford not to take showers when you're going through their personal hygiene phase, the menstrual cycle phase, compared to the men where men, the men that we interviewed, we interviewed about 30 men. They said they could go three days without water. It wasn't a problem. And then the other 30 women that we interviewed, they said they couldn't afford to go two days without taking showers, especially when you're going through their menstrual cycle phase. They cannot afford to do that. We also interviewed some of these women in health care institutions. In Ghana, one of the major health care institutions in Ghana is called Kolebutation Hospital. And some of the women we interviewed there, they were talking about how sometimes when they go for certain lab work to be done in regards to their health checkups, sometimes they would need to use restrooms. They would need access to water to wash themselves, to wash their hands, to wash their private part in regards to help them participate in certain health check lab work that needs to be done by the doctor. And also the women that go through maternity, the women that go through labor at the hospitals, most of them need access to water to help them have a comprehensive or a comprehensive health wellness checkup with their doctors and health care providers in the health care institution. So when they get there and there isn't access to water, it becomes a barrier to their health care needs, right? It affects them. And with the students on campus who do not also have access to water and struggle with access to water, when they don't have water, they also struggle. It affects their productivity. When they are supposed to be thinking about studying, there is that your brains are occupied with how am I going to get access to water to be able to shower, to take care of my personal hygiene needs, especially when I'm going through that menstrual cycle phase. They would rather be fixated on fixing that issue than paying attention to their books, right? So that whole lack of access to water cycle affects their productivity, especially the women. And then it also affects their health care needs when we look at the health care challenges in regards to water that women especially face when they go to their health care institutions to seek for health care. So what our water device is doing is the water that would have been lost due to overflow of storage tanks, we are making sure that we are conserving that water. We are making sure that we are saving those water so that they can be used to bridge some of these gaps that are already in the system. It doesn't make sense that we're losing over 2.2 million liters of water every month in our communities, in our schools. And then in our homes, it's about 4,000 liters of water per month. It doesn't make sense that we are losing that much of water every month when we can actually do something about it. But coming up with a water device that will address specifically address those gaps, right? So that is what Infotech Lab is all about. We are making sure that we're coming up with this device to help bridge all those water gaps. So the next slide, what has been our biggest challenges or barriers since we decided to embark on this journey in regards to addressing these water gaps? So capital access to funding has been one of our biggest hiccups. Our water device project is basically capital intensive. Unfortunately, it is capital intensive for a small water startup company. And so we've had difficulty being able to explore or deploy our solutions to all the different regions in the country. And one of the ways that we are working on right now, strategically working on to bridge that gap, is to leverage on collaborations and partnerships with wash organizations that already exist in the country, like the Ghana Water Company, and also making sure that we are collaborating with international organizations that support what we do and the wash agenda. So being able to do that is one of the ways that we are helping to strategically bridge that lack of access or access to funding gap. And also making sure that we are leveraging on working with grants organizations, organizations that offer grants. We are making sure that we have a strategic grants team that specifically target organizations that offers grants to wash organizations or wash businesses or entrepreneurs so that they can help us deploy our initiative or our solution across all boards, not only in Ghana, but also in Africa as a whole. Next slide. So our biggest objective here at Infitec Lab is to create and raise awareness on water, various and its impacts on economic transformation and gender disparities. And making sure that there is constant water availability in water stress and water scarce areas. We also do believe in that improvements to wash at home, school work, and in public spaces also support gender equity, which I spoke about earlier. Women and girls must also play a central role in designing and implementing solutions so that services respond to their specific needs. And that is one of the key factors that we took into consideration when we were developing our water device. We made sure that we engaged and also did a survey on the women and the men in the communities that we are serving to actually identify what specifically is hurting them in the communities when it comes to lack of access to water and how do we bridge that gap. We also believe Africa Water Vision 2025 is achievable with AquaSet using our technology. We can sustainably withdraw water from aquifers, aquifier dryouts, prevent water loss, and create awareness on water conservation. And we want to create a legacy in Africa. Infitec Lab we are so determined to create a legacy in Africa. We want to be part of Africa's history as a creator of solutions to address the challenges that Africans face. My name is Dr. Abigail Wilson and thank you for having me. Thank you very much Dr. Wilson for that presentation and then telling us what you do at Infitec Lab and the challenges and how you are dealing with it. So moving on we will hear from Dr. Barry Liner. So Barry will talk to us about Unleash, a global innovation network, the perspectives from a global partner. So Barry. Thank you very much Jacob. So yes I'm here to talk about the Unleash program which is a global innovation and entrepreneurship lab around the sustainable development goals. Next slide please. Unleash program started out of Denmark really focusing on all the SDGs and trying to attract young professionals from 18 to 35 to try to solve problems on the SDGs through human centered design and design thinking and entrepreneurship. There are a number of partners, hundreds of partners across the world for Unleash and then related to SDG6 I think we know many of the partners who work together all the time such as IWA, WEF, Stockholm International Water Institute, ImagineH2O and PUB in Singapore. Next slide. The Unleash program which I'm a facilitator in and a mentor for a couple of the programs starts with has an innovation lab which is about a thousand talents from 170 countries around the world all brought together in one place for a week-long program around design thinking. And then there's also the Unleash Plus which is a accelerator for businesses that have come out of the Unleash lab or other opportunities, other businesses that come from participants in the Unleash lab that have started a new business. Then once we hit the pandemic started with Unleash hacks online and smaller programs instead of a thousand people we have 30 or 40 people working on that over two weekends in a row. And of course once you've participated in this you become part of the Unleash community, the alumni and there's over 5,000 alumni now that are connecting all over the world. So one of the the innovation process, the entrepreneurship and the design thinking process that is taught is you know starts with problem framing to really understand the what's going on from a human-centered design and empathy mapping and everything so we don't design solutions looking for a problem that we actually help people design a solution for a specific problem by really understanding what that problem is. And then the process moves into ideation looking for trying to come up with as many ideas as possible and then down selecting them to find the best idea to kind of move forward with. And then prototyping once you have your idea prototyping to see what we can what needs to so we can set up and test it and then testing, refining and implementing you know rolling things out. And what you'll notice is with all of this is a this isn't a linear process. It goes back and forth so you as you learn more information you're going to have to go back to problem framing to understand things as you learn information from prototyping and testing you're going to modify it so you have new ideas that are going to come up. So it's a it's a an iterative process but a structured process putting the customer in the center and basically trying to drive innovation and entrepreneurship around these social challenges of the SCGs. Next slide please. Yeah one of the one of the tools that we use with the with the participants which are called who are called talents is the is activity cars so basically broken down a very complex design thinking construct and then put it into about 50 you know basically note card size bulleted activities to bring people along that journey. So that's it's something that all the that all of the talents take away from this is having gone through this this training without having to have like a 700 page book on design thinking or anything like that but something very tight and that they that they can reference in the future. Next slide. So Unleash started in 2017 with with a thousand talents brought to in Denmark and in 2018 another thousand were sent to Singapore and 2019 was the Shenzhen lab so where actually I was a facilitator for the SCG 6 track and had the pleasure of working with Jacob who was one of the talents in 2019 and Unleash. Over the you know when the pandemic started everything went virtual so we had smaller hacks and and then the Unleash plus was has been virtual since 2020 and then this year now that we're back moving around again in August there was a lab for about 200 people from our all around the Arctic that was hosted in Greenland and one of the reasons it was hosted in Greenland is because Greenland is 85% indigenous it's a majority indigenous country so it was really focused on trying to solve challenges in the Arctic and then the global lab is going to be the first two weeks in December in India this year and virtual Unleash plus has been going on with about 86 teams throughout the year and then there's also been some hacks that have happened along the way. Next slide. So I want to really talk about the people. You know when you get together and learn go through a very intense workshop you know five five to seven day workshop around design thinking you know to come up with a solution you're probably not going to have a come up with a viable business opportunity to move forward right away. It takes a while for those to to basically to mature and evolve and here's a couple of examples here. The first one is AI and water it is a artificial intelligence company out of Chile and Mexico and the founder is Camilo Vaneas. Camilo was actually at in Shenzhen as a talent with Jacob and over time the connections that Camilo made from that was able to form a company a couple of years ago and now they are in this they're raising money in their seed round and they already have 12 major customers in in Chile the largest port producer industrial operators wineries in in Chile so now they're getting some traction and they're trying to move throughout the rest of the Americas as before they go global but so they're in the process in the race round right now and moving forward. Another group that is IO tank and one of their participants was in Singapore and Shenzhen as talents and then they formed this company with IO tank is remote monitoring of septic and fatsoils and greases and they've got a company they've also been an alumni of Imagine H2O Accelerator so they are working now into heavy commercialization and they've got their funding taken care of and they are now working into commercialization. Now I would also I saw a comment that said somebody is going to be in a leash in India congratulations and I look forward to seeing you there speaking of people to be there a perfect example of this is Jacob who was a talent and Shenzhen in 19 and then didn't use exactly what came out of the workshop then but actually has developed a business and program at the Wash Advancement Center which was in the Unleashed Plus virtually this year and has just been selected as one of the top 25 teams that will be taken to India and for the boot camp in India so congratulations to Jacob that if I would have known in advance I would have been able to put this on the on the slides here and one of the key things about this is this network that it creates between all of these young professionals worldwide and even experienced professionals like myself when we connect to try to solve these problems you know entrepreneurship like you know we're always I could go to about probably about 160 countries in the world and be dropped off and through that Unleashed Network be able to you know basically connect with anybody spend the night at somebody's house or something to that effect so Jacob will one of Jacob's partners from Shenzhen I'm in San Francisco today and was able to meet with with one of the people that was in Shenzhen in Singapore just able to text somebody and say hey I'm going to be in Singapore and pop in and and meet with these people all around the world and the connections that they make are leading to these companies like AI and water IO tank and and the Wash Advancement Center so I'll be happy to answer any questions in the in the Q&A section but it's a phenomenal program and you definitely can talk to Jacob as somebody who's been in the in the talent side or me or any of the other partners who are working from the facilitator and mentor side thank you very much for your time thank you very much Barry for that presentation I cannot test to the fact that the Unleashed Innovation Program has been very helpful to my entrepreneurship journey so it's something that I would ask all of us here to explore because I'm very sure that you're going to benefit from it so we move on to I know the majority of the of us mentioned that funding is one of the challenges that we face the most so we are going to listen to a short video from Dr Akane Mo O'Don who's going to talk about how to approach fundraising and I believe it's going to be an interesting one so let's take a listen okay my name is Akane I'm just doing a little recording with respect to a little webinar for the graduate coders in the graduate coders group I just given a session just not long before now but I just felt maybe I'll just do it again captured in video but I think it's too important and there's a reason why I think so there is a there's there's too much money there's the availability of a lot of resources and people just don't access them I don't like it when people say there's no availability of resources there's no money there's no money sometimes not really about their availability of resources but the accessibility of the same I mean are you ready if you're looking for money how are you looking for money so I want to use the next 20 minutes or so just to capture a very very high level highlight of specific things you need to have in place if you're looking for money okay first and foremost I don't like calling it money I want to call it resources because I might not have money in the pocket or in the bank but if I'm able to achieve everything I need when I need it and in time I still have resources my point is so I give an example I travel all the time and I go for different things and different events but most of the time I never actually spend the money on my pocket so if somebody needs you enough to pay for it is comparable to giving you money but in this sense you are able to do what you need to do and when you need to do it without having to use your own money so it's access to resources that's very important so never look at grants or funding just only from a monetary point of view cash dollar also view it from a point of the availability of resources or materials to do what you need to do at the right time I'm not saying don't ask for money or apply for money but never it be cloud uh never like to be cloud your judgment or your understanding of funding okay that's the first thing secondly now you can't apply for money if you're disorganized I'm sorry if somebody wants to give you money the person expects you to be a bit more a bit more ready you know I mean a bit more prepared to show them what you need to use the money for except it's just some bonanza you know just giving you money but if somebody is put together a financial package of some sort or a grant a grand call is based on the back of a lot of meetings and strategies and with a specific objective in mind and so I won't just give my money just to anybody just just around the corner I want to know clearly that the person applying for this money is actually ready to use the money to do what the money was intended for that's too important and so you cannot be disorganized when you say you're looking for money I don't understand that the rush is not for that so let's talk about being organized when you're trying to get funding okay now I need to understand that the different kinds of funding okay that is applying for small grants grants to go for a seminar uh go for a workshop go for training go for an event you know I mean there are grants for like literally two projects so like one month two months three months four month type projects but then there are other kinds of grants there are grants for major projects big grants for two one year two years three even to five year type projects and so fundamentally the more the money you are asking for or you're looking for the more the documentation required to back up the reason you need the money and why you will be able to spend the money doing what you say you would and it also means therefore the level of preparation and and and and putting your place yourself organized to apply for it also increases okay so it's okay to apply for small grants 10 000 pounds or some amount of money so that's fine but for me I mean at this point in my life or my career I don't want to go for small money that's fine I want I want to spend some time preparing go for the big grant so I've got a longer project to work on I'm not saying it's wrong to apply for small grant that's also fine my point is you can't apply for grants whichever way and not have a level of preparation for those so let's talk about preparation now the first thing you need to know you need to know who is giving money just makes logical sense if I action on said in your field in chemistry who gives money around chemical projects or around chemical travels or chemical conferences do you know if you say you are in I don't know in a business business management you like to go for business strategy enterprise SMEs who actually gives money around SMEs but that is for your project it's for a conference seminar a scholarship do you know so first thing you need to know who actually gives money you can just keep saying I don't have money I don't have money and you have no idea who actually gives cash so if I were using my first thing I would do is do an excel spreadsheet comprehensive document of everybody who gives money within your field do a long list break it down even even to small grants medium-sized grants and even the big ones as long as you know who gives money do a simple google search and break it all down that's the first thing now secondly you need to know the people who give money not not not not not not not not not not all know who they are but know what they are made of what is your mandate their vision what is your objective what is your mission why do they give money when did they give money I mean it just makes sense if somebody gave you grants or they give a grant called last year in April and gave a grant called this year in April and you checked and the year before last was also in April doesn't it make sense that there's a potential this person might give a call next year April so why do you have to wait until February March you just bump into this call you go how many hurry no that dude that donor gave the same money or the same call the same period of time the last three years so you would know this if you get to know who gives money find out what do they do why do they give money that is always a political emotional strategic premise around grant there's always a commercial strategy around giving money don't just just give money just for just for for for the fun of it there's always a backdrop find out why are they put that funding call together in the first place you would notice if you've gone to their website now once you've known that then begin to prioritize in your source spreadsheet what calls to expect when to expect them and why you should expect them and now it's also important try and register or subscribe to their newsletters they always almost seem to have newsletters like they will tell you subscribe and maybe once every every week or once every month or every quarter they send newsletters to the people that are subscribed to these now it's interesting most newsletters will have an idea or a sense of what they are thinking about the next proposal or next grant call or next funding opportunity so even before the call comes out some newsletters would actually capture that we're thinking about this new call and get prepared that's the first thing subscribe to newsletters second you need to have these guys who give money within your purview around you are they having events go for it are they having conferences webinars say no for it you need to know and be in the circle of people who give money and not only that you also need to know the people who potentially apply for these monies you know why because at the end of the day when everybody leaves the room and go individual locations and the grant call comes out what normally happened these guys automatically becomes your competitors there's no other place to know who is thinking of planning what respect to a potential call than being in the midst of them you have to go for meetings have an idea of who is trying to apply for this next call and why and guess what it's not only about negative it's also the best time to know for example who to pitch as potential partners on those calls whether it's small grant or big grant is how you know who is thinking about them who shows up for the meetings find out okay my my goodness that guy has a specialty a bigger strength than me but maybe I have a strength they don't have then you can propose can we form a consortium it's better to get a partner for a call than go on your own if getting the partnership will make the call work so always try and be within the purview or environment or within the focus area of who gives money very important now one of the big issues around applying and willing grants I've noticed is the fact that you're overwhelmed with documentation and somebody will tell you why is that this calls always have so much requirements that you have to fill many forms and so on so so if you have money you don't want to have a clear idea who is applying for it and so the only way these grand donors or donors can actually know who is serious and credible is through documentation I mean these guys don't live in your house how would they know you have to show them clear justification of why you are the right person to be given that money and you will spend it appropriately and effectively to deliver the impact you said it would it's too important and so don't get overwhelmed by documentation the reason you get overwhelmed is because you are never really prepared in advance for when the call comes out and so for me I want to maybe print your picture so specific documentations you need to have whether a call is here or not for example your cv if you have a five page cv try get a two page cv most big calls will ask you to summarize into a two page cv now you might think that's very infinitesimal quite insignificant but trust me it's quite a lot of work to have a five page cv and under a short time frame you have to condense it into two pages then issues like oh my goodness what do I choose that is relevant into these two pages because an issue if you're under pressure you present the two page cv that capturing as much information for the particular proposal as you would because you are under pressure why not spend some time have a range of cv's two page cv that's what requires three page cv four page cv try and spend time preparing for proposals so you are ready a cv this one is executive summary yes if it's a business proposal or for an NGO development project the normally request for an executive summary what is the the the simple overview captured in one page of what you want to do when you are given the money for research proposals normally ask for an abstract i mean how would you capture in very simple terms short premise of why you want the ground and what you do it with okay so that's very important so understand your premises now our proposal some people will call it case for support so it's broken to different levels your introduction the background what's the problem you're trying to solve i mean why is that a problem investigate some train some figures some data if you need to to paint a clear picture quite quickly of why it's important this is resolved that's it goes in your background then it goes to what your objectives what you aim to achieve if this i don't have a day you have this project what you want to solve some will go as far as kind of requesting for references oh yes absolutely vital so try and prepare a list of references if it's a small proposal they'll ask for a little reference familiar for formal lecturer or for my employer or current employer so why not break them in advance it's okay well i call my come i might ask for a reference is it possible you prepare something in advance if there's too much trouble but at least they know the trouble is you'll not look at it say a grant call you're not in a hurry oh i need to get reference from my my lecturer in unibend or you have to not travel a long distance you gotta look for that person and the time is going no why do you have to wait until you see the call if you note generically this will be requirements i'll be asked for then prepare for them on my laptop i've got a list of references in fact i've gone as far as actually speaking to partners to get that frameworks of support letters and all and only the permission and all they ask me to do is okay okay doc okay when the call comes out let us know and we can do a refreshing to fit the call because you will know your competence and your capacity and we've been engaged with this proposal get engaged with partners okay now so besides that some requests for support letters so a support letter is a part it's a letter from a potential partner or current partner to show their support for the proposal you're trying to put forward to ask for money so try and speak to these guys and get an idea of what their support might be why not it's important and interestingly it's in support letters you state things like in kind contribution so if a partner has a free venue and he can contribute that to the project that is like potentially an in-kind contribution that you could actually estimate that monetarily and put it in the proposal to say that over the way even though i'm asking for money i've spoken to different partners and they are given different in-kind contributions to support this project you know the beauty of a donor getting a proposal and a proposal you specify the in-kind contribution and even estimate it monetarily that's quite powerful it shows that you have a vested interest in seeing that project work enough for you to find a partner who contributes something not necessarily cash but something of value into the project but you can only know this if you engage with them in advance okay now the bigger the project documents will ask for so for example okay thank you um i've posted the link to the full video in the chat so you can follow it after the session and then watch to the end i believe what you've watched so far has been insightful and um there are lots more to learn from that video so we move on to our last video today um we're listening to Dr Tiego Bresani who will speak about the roadmap of the reference center for sustainable sewage treatment plants Tiego thank you very much uh jaco for the introduction and i'm sure that spirits are high still high for this last presentation after those very interesting talks and so i will take you around 10 minutes to speak in the name of the reference center on sustainable sewage treatment plants and share with you we can go to the next one please and share with you our roadmap actually that guides us from academia to entrepreneurship so the reference center on sustainable sewage treatment plants you see our logo in portuguese in the right hand side of this slide was born was born beginning uh this year after what we call a as a long incubation period so the center actually the reference center is a spin-off company or startup derived from the brazilian national institute of sustainable sewage treatment plants the one that you see uh the logo in the left hand side of the of this uh slide slides so this brazilian national institute was coordinated by the federal university of miniaturize in brazil of course and then putting together other six strong universities in the country so maybe a short note here uh so in brazil we refer to the today very well known water resource recovery facility as sustainable sewage treatment plants but it's the same thing so from 2017 to march this year the team of the reference center was directly involved in that national institute so this i will explore a bit further in the coming slides one very important thing here is that we dare to have such a powerful name so reference center even though as a young group as you can see in this slide because we believe that the reference center this startup company can help shaping the transition to a circular economy in the sanitation sector of latin america okay so at the reference center on sustainable sewage treatment plants we we had the opportunity to close this uh intergenerational gap within our borders so we are a group of we can go one next please we are a group of five young water professionals holding masters and PhDs in the washfield so and then we invited a senior professional to join us in this venture but how was this possible how could we make this invitation so by building trust between generations when we share the same goals this is a key thing so professor carlos at the center of this image at the left hand side of these lights was the coordinator of that Brazilian national institute that i showed and my colleagues you see in this uh slide or as we use it to call the executive team of that institute but we can go one further this and i mentioned that sharing goals is essential for building this intergenerational trust and we paved it this way during our incubation periods as i mentioned focusing on three kinds of contributions so we were uh it's important to mention that we were inside the university during the time of the brazilian national institute so the first goal was to publish information in national publications of wide circulation in the technical fields such as those you see in the in the slides and eventually also international publications as as this book published by iwa on anorak reactors forming string series treatment at the left hand side of the corner of the slide so we've been collecting very nice feedback from practitioners and also people in academia related to those publications we can go one slide further please a second shared goal was to develop low cost equipment that fulfill local needs local brazilian needs of the sanitation sector such as low cost automatic samplers which you see in the left hand side of this slide three phase separators for usb reactors at the center of these lights and low cost probes for total solid detections for instance at the right hand side so those two products the automatic sampler and the three phase separator at the left hand side of this light were eventually patented and they are commercially available right now in the brazilian market and here i have to mention that cross collaboration was a key element so we put together industry service providers and academia to come up with tailor-made solutions for the national sector so we we knew the problem in advance and then we put those actors together in order to come up with solutions we can go one further please and besides those products that i showed you software for managing anaerobic basics sewage treatment plants were also developed during that incubation period and those softwares they focus on the transition to a simpler economy again by the bridges that we built between these different institutions those free online platforms were made available the left hand side we have biogas estimation software biogas is software for estimating the production in anaerobic reactors and in the right hand side we have a software for calculates carbon footprint on mainstream anaerobic plants and we can go one further please the last but not the least goal of that shared intergenerational goals that i mentioned before was to foster changes in the regulations the national regulation level and also the brazilian states regulation level so for that our group was directly involved in the technical scientific discussions for establishing criteria and procedures for the production and replicate application of biosolids and soils and also in the guidelines for the directory use of non-potable water from sewage treatment plants so at the academia at that time of the brazilian national institute were directly involved in those technical scientific discussions and those two pieces of this legislation they were cornerstones for creating relevant momentum for resource recovery discussion at our national level as you can see they were just proven two years ago we can move on further please and so all of this that i've been sharing with you has helped us now as a startup company in the washfield to coin our tropical vision of water resource recovery facility or as we call here a sustainable sewage treatment plant so sorry for the the names in portuguese in this slide but but i'll just guide you through those through those points so you may have noted that we advocate for the mainstream anaerobic sewage treatment as the core of the resource recovery facility so this is represented in this slide by the usb reactor fed by the raw sewage we can go one further please so the access sludge from this reactor can be dewatered for instance in drying beds and refuges nothing new up to now and the undergone alkaline stabilization for instance and then we are able with that treated sludge to attend the regulation i previously showed and then apply this material in agriculture for instance and when it comes to the liquid phase to the treated sewage itself we can go one further please following a simple disinfection step we can produce for instance safe water from non-portable uses whose control criteria are now clearly defined in the regulation that they just showed you and one next please and we did some efforts in order to show that the payback of such investments which are represented in this graph for water reuse for instance they can be as shorter as short as five months in some instances okay so with that in mind we can go to the next slide please and then we start to question ourselves so what is the main challenge we face at the moment first business models for resource recovery i would say worldwide they are not fully developed conversely they are i would say at their infancy and moreover sanitation companies and service providers mostly in in brazil right now they are not 100 percent convinced of the needs and also the benefits of changing to a circular economy approach and we are now assembling this puzzle of a so-called strategic alliance so we are building bridges between one big sanitation company in brazil the one you see in these slides at the top part of these slides and the federal university of miniaturized so the idea we are seeking to create a platform of innovation and moreover demonstration of sustainable practices in in the sanitation sector and it is very important to stress those demonstration practices they are fully adapted to the local reality of developing countries one next please and what i would like to young water professionals to to grasp from this presentation is that we can build international trusts by being oriented by same goals and knowing our local needs so i say this specifically from those of developing countries as i do believe and as i believe that we need to adapt technologies or even inventing new ways for the transition to a circular economy which should take into account the financial constraints of developing countries in incubation periods in which we can demonstrate how the goals are translated into actions can be very important as i show you during this presentation and cross collaboration collaboration among different stakeholders in the washfield is the way to go to address the entrepreneurship challenges and build the bridges needed for the transition to a circular economy with that i would like to thank you very much we can go one next thank you very much for your attention and they'll be happy to answer questions during the chat thank you very much thank you very much for that presentation showing us that people from different generations can come together to form a wash enterprise to solve the solutions that we are looking for to the challenges in the water sector so thank you very much for that so we will have our second poll how confident are you in becoming a wash entrepreneur after listening to all the presentations today and should there be a group for both senior and young wash entrepreneurs and other stakeholders to continue this discussion about wash entrepreneurship we have two minutes to answer these questions then we can move on to the discussions and a quick reminder please put your questions in the q&a session then the panelists and the speakers can address them okay so how confident are you in becoming a wash entrepreneur somewhat confident very confident so majority of us are somewhat confident it's good that no one is not confident about becoming a wash entrepreneur so that is great i think as the discussions continue we will find a way to make everybody confident yeah um should there be a group for both senior and young wash entrepreneurs and other stakeholders yes okay we have 100 percent and then five percent says no that's one percent okay that is fine so we will see how best we can move on with that um so we have the question and um answers time please if you have a question put it in the q&a session okay uh jacob just uh let us invite all the speakers to open their cameras so the participants can see them during the discussion and while we have the discussions uh we will be stopping sharing the screen so we will highlight all the speakers okay great so we have questions and answers time that's my favorite part of the webinar so there is one question here to um abigo so bulua tifa is asking i am interested in the advantages of the aquatec system over the conventional float valve used in most water pumping systems as well as its fundamental operating principle hello yeah abigo can hear you now okay do you want me to speak yes please okay thank you so much for showing interest in being part of aqua set gana we are on instagram so you can connect with me on instagram aqua set gana when you go on instagram just type aqua set gana you can send us a message on there or you can also send me an email abigo wilson 331 at gmail.com and then we can connect and you can become a partner with us thank you so much thank you very much abigo um adjun is asking how does iw how can iw help us to scale automated and iot enabled wastewater treatment solution i think that that is what we are doing one of the platforms to bring um stakeholders in the entrepreneurship sector together so that we can learn from them learn about the strategies to use to build our enterprises so adjun i think one of such webness is is an answer to your question what iw can do to help but um i think i'll direct this question to barry how can type of businesses um scale up their solutions uh that's a great question um so uh iwa and i i work at the water environment federation which obviously partners with iwa the best opportunity for if you're trying to um bring your new iot um technology to to market is actually to get demonstration projects and the the networks of iwa and other um groups like wef and unleash or whatever are a great opportunity to find those potential people who will actually um put your put your equipment in place and actually give you the results because it's very important to not just do pilots um but to actually do demonstration type projects and people who are very interested in that the the end users um are going to be what you want to focus on in the in any of these communities that they look for the people who are the end users so that you can not just talk to other just academics or researchers but actually the end users to get some of that demonstration um sites and then potential opportunities for commercial sales thank you very much barry so um aritro is asking he said hi this is aritro from india we have a water quality consultancy company that focuses on design of with water treatment plants etp stp is there any way we can collaborate with tiago and work on completing the cycle in terms of circular economy i would also like to seek advice regarding the issue of scaling and ion removal which is a major issue in north is northeastern india so tiago yes thank you jacob thank you are you for your your actually your comments of course we can collaborate a lot together because we know that india you guys you have a lot of anaerobic reactors treating directly treating syringe rights and as i showed during the presentation we do believe that this is a core for our developing countries in the tropical region to i mean push forward the agenda of circular economy of course we can do a lot together right now we are mostly involved in projects that we can look into all of the different aspects related to the treatment are you for instance biogas use the recover direct recover of nutrients by say directly use using the the treated syringe as for non portable uses for instance as i presented so there i do believe that there there is there are lots of opportunities to to collaborate and i will just type again in the chats my email and please do not hesitate to contact us of course thank you in the second part of the question jaco i think it's not direct to me right i would like to seek advice regarding the issue of scaling and iron removal which is a major issue in northeastern india okay ion removal yes okay maybe this is not directly related to me but let's say we do not face those kinds of problems here i am related to iron removal and i do believe that maybe this is more related to water treatment than wastewater treatment i'm not sure if this is the case right and so i do believe that this is something more related to the treatment we are not directly involved in those uh advancements and yeah maybe there is some someone else that can step in and also uh yeah collaborate on this that answer okay uh bari do you have experience in that field yeah i'm the i'm not familiar with the specifics of northeast india but scaling and iron removal especially in in water treatment and distribution like diago said is very common worldwide i would imagine that iwa has a a group on water treatment that could they can post their question to there um also there's plenty of resources online companies that um provide services and technologies for this which is actually probably more going to be overwhelming so i would recommend going through an iwa specialist group first and asking the specific question and clarifying a little bit beyond scaling and iron removal what scaling where is this industrial is this municipal um and iron removal again is this at industrial is this in um municipal household level uh utility level um so thank you very much bari in this i'll just call on you to i know i know this is your field so here's something to say about it hi jaco can you hear me yes sorry because can you please repeat your question yeah so um i retro is asking um for advice regarding the use of scaling and iron the issue of scaling and iron removal um yeah it is my area and um i was just trying to to see if i could conjugate what was said but um so basically when we're looking into uh groundwater then the iron removal is is quite uh easily achieved uh did he give any idea on what is large amounts or what what amount would be interesting no yeah um but uh and we're talking about drinking water yeah yes so in my head here what what i would say is that open filters with sand filtration could easily work um and it could be quite reasonable to to do it at a filtration rate of about uh 10 meters an hour something like this but this is my i mean if there's any specific advice that i can give um everyone is just welcome to to reach me um because i can be quite geeky about this the what i'm worried more here is about actually biological growth uh in this case so depending on the conditions that we have on site it could be required to look into disinfection after so in Denmark where i said we do not use any disinfection technology uh we we simply uh treat water through biological processes meaning that the bacteria themselves are the ones um removing the the contaminants including iron um however there are different geographical areas where the temperature of the water would promote a growth of bacteria that is not good and in that case is infection methods need to be applied if not uv then then chlorination um yes i would also raise here the concern of um uh other contaminants such as manganese and ammonium just because all of those three can be removed with the same technology and therefore if you have the same those contaminants they can also be removed with sand filtration so just in case that is also included okay thank you very much in this okay Ayuba is asking are there funds for young entrepreneurs how we go Tiago what have been your experience yes i do believe that's maybe uh Dr Akimo that gave us that nice very nice and powerful presentation would be the perfect person to answer that right yeah maybe i can step in with uh our brazilian experience uh so we we we saw from from the presentation from the video that's uh we saw that some aspects are very important to prepare so if if you know uh your i would say the people that will get funding or the institutions that will fund uh some some some some lines and research i mean you can be prepared in advance let's say that's uh the most powerful i would say advice that i heard during this uh during this panel and i would say that we we can be prepared in advance so we can know about the funds that are available and by knowing the funds we can be prepared in advance to the moment that they are going to be okay released so at least in our experience here we we at least can map some important institutions and also uh from the public and also the private sector that's i would say have this kind of regular calls and then we could be prepared for the next one for instance i'll say that this is indeed a very uh i would say not straightforward but a very nice way to go in order to i would say fundraising jacob i would jump on this since it's something that we work here with iwa in terms of looking for opportunities for young water professionals and there are opportunities uh if you search online you can find it i will share some links in the chat one of the most famous one that we have in terms of call for proposals and information about opportunities for young water professionals you can find in just water jobs but even with iwa we've been publishing a lot of opportunities for young water professionals in our web page our social media and also in the ywp newsletter so i do recommend that everyone sign up for the newsletter so you can stay updated to all the things that we are sharing there yeah i wanted to add this what has worked for us so for us at infotech lab and this is something new we started doing this year right when you start as a startup you may not have the expertise or the skill sets in identifying how to go about funding so you can look for people who are good in writing for grants and they can actually help you so we use a website called fiber i'm sure most of you are familiar with fiber f i v e r r and they have so many grant writers on there that are familiar with wash projects right so you basically pick and target grant writers who are good in writing grants for water projects or whatever projects you're writing on and usually they would do the research for you and give you a list of organizations that support water projects right so whatever projects you're working on they'll give you a list of organizations that are willing to provide funding for that particular project and then they will help guide you to be able to submit applications for funding because i know most of us we have that entrepreneurship skills and we may not have the funding skills when it comes to that right so you don't want to find yourself in a position where you're coming up with good ideas but you're missing the ability to submit your application to actually get funding so that is one of the strategies that we have used so far and it's working for us and of course like isabella said you can follow organizations that support water projects or whatever projects you're working on just do random google search you know network and find those organizations and target them and then find ways that you can apply to their organizations to partner with you to help with the funding thank you thank you very much for all those responses um someone is asking what is your advice for people who would like to be wash social premiers do you think there would be a conflict of interest if the initiative is centered on entrepreneurship how can we balance this social impact and entrepreneurship i think the person is basically asking for having for-profits and not for-profits organizations um be washed so barry uh yeah so uh there are there are organizations the organizational formats like b-corps in some countries which are kind of a blend of non-profit and for-profit but that's getting into the technical side honestly and I think Thiago could probably answer some more on this topic very well but number one I don't think there is a conflict of interest between that because I think we need to have entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship if you're in a company or an organization or like a government entity you have to use this entrepreneurship focus to try new things and learn quickly and pivot in order to have that social impact so in fact I don't think there's a conflict of interest I think they're almost required as complex as the problems are today thank you can you just add very quickly on that yeah I would say just to I mean add a very very short comment on that that's actually they are not conflicting social say the social aspect of it it should be directly linked to the entrepreneurship I mean it's a requirement says very since uh so we should strive for for for business that are social meaningful that's that's the point I would say the financial aspect should be a consequence and not your main driver if it's your main driver I do believe that you should rethink a bit great Isabella over to you thank you Jacob and thank you everyone for coming today I saw that the discussions were really interesting and everyone is keen to keep discussing about the topic about entrepreneurship and watch and how to find opportunities and even how to prepare to submit a proposal for a funding so we will keep that in mind and I hope that you join us in our next event and at the same time I want to invite you all to sign up and be an IWA member you can use this discount code to receive some discounting the new membership and you can just go to our website and sign up there also I want to share information about our next webinar that is related to the topic discussed today so we have this webinar in partnership with UTS on transforming the water and sanitation workforce we will be discussing a lot about diversity gender and inclusion practice so I left the link below but you can find this information on our website and I also have some information about the digital water summit that we have will happen in Bilbao in Spain so you can check the website and how to participate and since we are talking about the opportunities for young water professionals and this topic I invite you all to check this opportunity on capacity development workshop that is organized by the coffee and the foundation and in partnership with some water different organizations and from our side we are also helping preparing can you go back yes also helping preparing for for the activities and its focus on capacity development and entrepreneurship so definitely related to this and the focus is on African young water professionals and entrepreneurs so just scan the QR code and check the information that we have there to register following this I also have another opportunity related to the topic today is this is the global freshwater challenges is organized by the UPALink in partnership with the word economic forum and is open to submissions until November 8 and if you check the if you scan the QR code and check the website you can find all the focus areas the criteria that they have it and how to submit it and I also left the information about the contact person so you can send a mail to Anna and she will be ready to to guide you on this submission yes I think that's all from my side I hope that you enjoyed this webinar and then you're taking consideration everything that the speakers share it and feel free to reach out to us if you have any kind of questions and comments Jacob any pain that you want to add yes so I would also thank you for the time and then spending this time with you all contributing to this webinar and thank you to the speakers for the insights that you shared with us I believe that we will continue to share a lot of more information about Washington entrepreneurship especially for young people and see how we can help each other to succeed so look out for the next steps yeah