 Hi everyone, welcome to the Webinar. I can see already some participants joining. We are expecting a lot of people here today, also for this webinar to celebrate a bit the World Water Day, that it will be in two days, in Friday. And today we have an important topic to talk about. A bit about like this skill gap between the young water professionals and also a bit the senior and how can we address this and trying to bridge this skills gap in the water and sanitation jobs. Welcome everybody. It's great seeing so many numbers here rising in my screen. Good afternoon for some of you, maybe good night for others. But thank you so much for joining to this IWO Webinar. My name is Francisco Braga and I will be the moderator today. You are already welcome to also introduce yourselves in the chat. Just say where are you from, what you're doing in the water sector. And I guess we'll just wait maybe one more minute for the last participants to enter. And then I guess we can join this amazing and interesting webinar that we have prepared for you with interesting speakers, but also hopefully a great panel discussion where all of you are invited to also ask questions. That's great. We can already see some people writing in the chat. Thank you so much. So welcome everybody. My name is Francisco Braga. As I mentioned before, I'm part of the Young Water Professionals. Dan Mark, the Danish chapter and the secretary. And today I'm welcoming you here in this IWO Webinar for water and sanitation jobs, bridging the skills gap. For the agenda for today, we'll have some three presentations and then a panel discussion, around 50 minutes this panel discussion and then some close remarkings. So the first presentation is about actually bridging the gap, guiding the young people's career, and then the employment trends. Just a little bit about like some house rules. Let's say it for the webinar information. This webinar is recorded and it will be made available on demand on IWO Connected. Plus also with the presentation slides and other information that is important. Of course, the speakers are responsible in terms of copyright permissions and their opinions are of course their own opinions and doesn't necessarily reflect the IWA opinions. It's great seeing so many of you already writing in the chat. I can share also here a bit like the chat box. Please use it this for actually introduce yourselves, sharing where are you from and also what you work in the water sector. And the Q&A box just really use it for the questions to send it to the panelists. We'll go through them, hopefully a lot of them during the session. So please just use this Q&A box for these questions and while the chat can be used for general requests and this interaction activity. So now I would like to just briefly mention our great panel that we have here today. As I mentioned, I'm Francesca Braga and I'm the Secretary of the Young Water Professionals. I'm from Denmark. Then we have Frances and Eder from Cranfield University. Frances will also have this perspective as the student ambassador, while Eder will have more like the academia side as being a senior lecturer. We have then Josh from the Josh Water Jobs, the founder where he will also share a bit with us his own experience and the current trends in the water sector. And Neil, as part of the WCAFED, he'll tell us a little bit about and try to guide us in our careers and hopefully better choices within the water sector as Young Water Professionals. So it's a pleasure having you all here. And then I would like to give the floor to the first presentation. That is maybe the, exactly, thank you so much. Erin, the first presentation that is with Frances and Eder from Cranfield University. You have around 10 minutes and the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Francesca. Hello everybody. As I said, my name is Heather Smith and I'm the course director for the Water and Waste Water Engineering course at Cranfield University and also with us today we have one of our current students, Francesca. So I'll let him introduce himself in a minute. But just to start with, I just wanted to talk a little bit about our perspective from how we've been running this course, about how things are evolving in terms of the needs for higher education in the water sector, particularly in technical skills. So if you could go to the next slide, please. Yes, so we run and have run for quite some time an MSc course, a master's course in water and wastewater engineering which is focused on particularly treatment technologies and an emphasis on public health and treating water, both water and wastewater to an appropriate standard. So if you can advance a little bit there. We're now shifting that a little bit. So it's no longer going to be called water and wastewater engineering, it's now going to be called hopefully, this is still subject to university approval but the plan is for it to become water and wastewater processes with two routes, an engineering route which was similar to what was before and an environmental science route. And what this change has recognized is that the priority of environmental issues has really rocketed up the agenda where the water sector has very understandably been focused predominantly on public health and treatment engineering for public health for a very long time. The priority of environmental issues and protecting the environment from the harmful effects of things like over abstraction but also wastewater pollution has really taken hold. So our course is, we're trying to evolve our course to reflect this and provide both an engineering route that is still focused on the treatment but also an environmental science route where you still learn about the treatment but learn about the impact on the environment as well and how to keep a healthy environment. So there is a balance there. I think both are becoming very important in the water sector but we still have a challenge. There's still a gap in terms of the technical skills that are evolving in the sector and I think one of the things that we've seen is when we're trying to attract students crews in the water sector are often forgotten if you have a technical background looking at a career and a technical subject the water sector can be quite often left behind in some of those discussions. We do think that there's a challenge there where it sometimes has lower pay compared to other utility sectors even though the significance of it in terms of public health and environmental protection is huge and there is still quite a strong need for people to come into the sector which is partly why we've organized this webinar today because there are really ambitious requirements in the UK the water sector here works in spending cycles they're called amp cycles that sort of dictate the amount of spend that's going to happen over a certain period of time and we're just about to go into a new cycle and the total spend for that cycle is predicted to be double almost double what it was in the previous cycle but there's a huge need to understand where those people are going on from because the technology is there there are some technological challenges but it's really about do we have the people and the people to deliver that huge ambition in the water sector and I think that's true elsewhere in the world as well not just in the UK so we're very keen in our course to attract new people not just those who are in a sort of water background already but who will want to come into the sector and really fill that gap of the technical skills so with that I will hand over to one of our students who is developing those technical skills and doing an excellent job on our course so I will give the floor to you Francis thank you so much Heather yeah so my name is Francis Sanka originally from Ghana and so I got into the water sector working with a multinational company in Ghana it's called Kuga Kula Beverges Africa and we had to deal with drinking water and producing some dairy products and although my background was more in mining and minerals but that job offer was actually my initiation or my trajectory to the water sector so I was like a person who wasn't really having to experience the water sector until I had that job and to just create some memories I shared a few photos to be able to reflect on the growth pattern I've gone through so as you can see in the middle some of the projects we did with one of the consultants which built a wastewater treatment plant within our two facilities in Ghana so as you can see that's been one of the commissioning and processing engineers in the picture and so their stream left was officially my last day at work when I was in Ghana as I was about to prepare to do my MSc and I had to take a picture to reflect on how far I've come and the one to the right being a field trip we had recently on the MSc as we visited a wastewater treatment plant called Stemswater in London can we go to the next slide please so this is just to remind ourselves of what Dr Heather mentioned concerning the skills we have to deal with obviously in perspective with the sustainable development goals and currently we have we have an agent asset force and also sorry agent work force and also assets which are aging out because of infrastructure and we also have climate change issues impacting the globe and population growth which has brought a lot of demand and water stress so we need to bring new skills new opportunities as well as new drivers and to reflect on the opportunities which we can use to be able to effect the change we want to see I was thinking through that if there is a resource and so I talk about resource and investment I'm talking about the opportunities made available for young professionals and investing into things like higher education as well as job opportunities as well as career guidance and that also sits with industrial partnerships and networking so of course this event is a networking opportunity because I believe there will be things that may not be previewed to some students or some professionals but you may get to learn it from there so I believe these two things are part of the key things that we can leverage on to be able to drive change to shorten the diversion from deviation actually from climate change and population growth as well as the workforce and the assets and we will have to remind ourselves that there will be a few opportunities or sorry a few potentials to address and to stop and distance from coming to pass so one of the barriers will have to do with open access to opportunities so I notice that although the internet is a very open platform not everybody may have the access to opportunities for example things like scholarships things like job career guidance and all of that probably maybe not many people may be on LinkedIn not many may also be connecting with the people that pull these things it creates a gap because I believe we've got people with motivation but sometimes the opportunity is hard to find and also empowering young professionals so this has to do with things like gender inequality and things like a few things that has to do with terms of gender and stuff like that so can we go to the next slide please so this was basically to share some of the rich experience I've had studying my water and wastewater MSc and I just took a few pictures of course we've got a lot of LinkedIn but just to reflect on the higher education and the technical training with lab assessments with presentations and stuff like that so the one to the left is basically showing a lab activity we had on another process called advanced oxidation process which is something that I never knew actually so I've got to learn a lot and you can see some of us in the lab having to conduct some lab assessment and to the right was a field trip we had with Mogden so we went to London to visit I believe the third biggest effluent treatment plant in the UK if I'm not wrong and how that they're able to treat their wastewater and it was very cheap facility we got to learn a lot of things so what I'm trying to say is that at Cranfield we get to benefit from a very elevated learning excellent academics and also opportunities to grow both in the academia and technical side of things so we learn science with lab stuff as well as management stuff come and go to the next slide please so what makes Cranfield unique obviously I like to highlight on this because I believe that higher education is one of the ways we can actually bridge the skill gap because people come to universities obviously to learn the relevant skills, obtain the relevant accreditation specifications to put them in the right position to be able to apply for the necessary jobs or the opportunities so Cranfield has an industrial event training as our curricula is always almost a data based on the needs of the industry and our relationship with the industry so Cranfield is one of the places that I like to say that most of the industries have huge confidence because the training we receive at Cranfield is not just limited to the classroom it's also comprehensive and also as a postgraduate university we offer a very specialized field of learning so we only do master's programs and PhD so it's more like a hub for higher learning where people get to research on their specific topics and become special little experts if I should say on what they're doing and we have a very unique course structure we have a thought model component which we have lecture sessions we also have a group design project and what makes it interesting is that most of these projects are actually funded by companies, real companies in the UK so with what I'm working on currently our project is funded by Scottish Water and we're working on recovering some of the resources has to do with methane and making value out of it and also the individual fees they are also most sponsored by industry so you get to work with clients or people who work in the water sector and that also creates a networking opportunity the next thing has to do with we've got excellent academics of course have there been one and facilities and Cronfield has a state of the art facilities we've got a pilot plan for drinking water and wastewater treatment so for people who are looking to grow in the water sector you get the chance to be able to not just learn things in the classroom but also be able to apply them in the laboratory and also in the plant so you see how water is treated and no very innovation that's coming to play and that's all linked to the SDGs and finally we've got a global reputation and industrial partnership so most of the graduates that leave off of the comfort MSc are highly sought after by companies all around the world as we have graduate fairs, we have opportunities and career guidance to help people explore, next slide please yeah so I added a few additional resources which I believe could be beneficial to anybody you may be watching and hopefully you will need to go back to the direction and get opportunities so the first has to do with the programs and courses that are done in water so we have the advanced water management, water and sanitation as well as what I'm doing the water and wastewater so depending on your needs and your background you'll be able to hopefully get one of these things the next being a blog that I wrote which was published at the Cronfield blogs you may want to read about what excited me to come to Cronfield and my journey most people like I mentioned they don't have access to these things so I thought of maybe putting access to these things so that you could check, so you could check the Scottish opportunities and see if you could hopefully apply for one and also PhD funding and I would like to share as was mentioned I'm also a student ambassador so I'll be happy to chat with any students who may need direction on the course also on find opportunities you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn as well, next slide please so the job pathways in the water sector just highlighted a few options so what will water graduate somebody who did advanced water, water and sanitation or wastewater likely do in the near future so there's pathway for consultancy and listed a few companies which are big companies multinational within UK so you could get into consultancy you could get into asset management so you realize that you actually get into projects even though you did the water program because we get to learn things that are related to multidisciplinary practices you could also get into engineering projects process design you could get into NGOs or partnerships with higher institutions like the IWA UNICEF DEFRA you could also potentially get into academia where you get to do a master's by research or a doctoral program or even advanced further to become a lecturer, next slide please so this is where I stand so obviously the first picture has to share with the kind of limitless opportunities you get to receive from my personal perspective reflected on how far have come and crown field sort of positions that's in the very right way we have to go and just to add something which probably I didn't prepare to add so thankfully we are not going to show it we participated in the challenge I'm not sure if this can be seen unfortunately it won't be seen no problem, yeah so just to mention that there are opportunities to actually work with companies and also get awards so I think Heather knows about this we had a challenge which was funded by Unilever and a few other companies and thankfully my team came up to be the challenge winner and so something we were proud of and just to highlight that there are actually opportunities for people who are looking to leverage on them to grow and so hopefully for my MSc I'm looking for to becoming a key player and addressing these global issues with water and sanitation and wastewater as well as energy within the UK and the water large and hopefully get to academia with a PhD and get back to my field of work thank you thank you so much Francis and Heather for this interesting presentation once again ask you to start typing your questions in the Q&A box we'll have some of the questions already answered and we'll have in the panel discussion later on also some answered live so the next presentation is Neil where he will guide us in our careers and try to understand the different paths and how to manage them the floor is yours Neil and welcome thank you very much hi everyone I hope you're well thank you all for coming today it's a big audience 159 wow that's great for a webinar so thank you I'm just going to start slightly just going off piece before I start what I was going to say because there's a comment and a question I saw that were really interesting someone called Deborah had mentioned that 1% of graduates are actually going into the water sector at the moment I don't know if that's in the UK or worldwide but either way 1% is horrific and one of the reasons why I think that's a really interesting perspective because that's where kind of Aquafed works in I just think that utilities are absolutely awful around the world at presenting themselves in a way that shows that they're actually they can be in many cases are thanks Deborah it's UK I'm very surprised then because there are so many brilliant opportunities for careers and such a range of jobs from engineering to law in terms of customer service in a range of jobs that are out there in utilities but I just think they're just awful at showing that actually they can be a dynamic and interesting place to work for young people and there's also a question from Daniel from UNICEF and I think Josh is going to answer it but he's talking about workforce diversity and that UNICEF are unable to attract more female candidates which again is really shocking for me that UNICEF are finding it difficult but I was involved in a webinar a couple of weeks ago with the government and we had what I call some queens of sanitation in Africa who are five women who are working and really successfully having great careers in urban sanitation mostly in utility space and they talked about very practical things cases for women and it's not about big ideas about gender equality and I think women really get that it came down to simple things like for example shift work late at night you know was there a bus available for them to get them from work to home safely some of them can't remember the name trained them on how to use small motorbikes and scooters so they could get around safely and quickly safe as you can on a motorbike and get to the places of work so it came down to practical steps also things like was the equipment in their size what we find often is in utilities particularly in Africa is PPE equipment is in men's sizes big gloves, big boots and those were the kind of barriers that actually were the reality for women and that were not being addressed so anyway that's just some observations on some questions that came up but okay what I'm here to tell you about actually is the career guidance project that Aquafed ran on behalf of the Netherlands government and this is about an idea that came about that basically young people need help at careers and at some point they'll come and work in a utility but they'll do they want to do all sorts of other jobs in and around the sector as well and this idea perhaps in my generation that people worked in one organisation through their career or most of their career we understand that young people don't really want to do that anymore and they want to have variety and try different things and have different experiences so there's a lot of opportunities on institutions like auto utilities and other service providers to make what we do as part of a career plan for a young person some key things apply because I'm going to show you some actual successes I'm not going to just show you the problems there are definitely solutions out there the key thing about developing young people in their careers number one is about partnership between institutions and where we've seen that opportunity in a training college it sounds so easy but when it works it really really works very well leadership and commitment to youth from a nice wish list something we all want and it's a shame that leaders in our sector don't often see it as their role but when it works it works very very well and they show that they have vision and they show that investing in young people is actually an investment in the organisation that they work for so that's very very important I think just seeing young people as an investment so yeah next slide please okay so this was a project basically in two steps right so first of all we did a little bit of research and I know in the sector we love doing research highlighting the same problems again and again so forgive me slightly but I needed some of the data to then do the second part of the project which is actually to create guidance for utility managers and specifically so they can understand what roots young people could come in to work for utility where they could come from what their career aspirations are and where they want to go to afterwards so what this guidance does is meant to do is help a utility manager particularly in the global south because that's where it was focused on to set up training programs and recruit in a way that's going to help young people with their overall career so it sounds you know a bit very very a nice thing to do and we hope now that we can actually start implementing it and getting some traction and getting utility managers to actually use it but that's the real idea for it the idea for this concept of career management hasn't just something that we've dreamed up it's actually come from listening from young people for about I don't know for me it's been about five years now I've been engaging with young people in various stages and various reasons in my role in the sector but also as Aquafed as we're private operators when we're coming to when we're brought into run a service the first thing we do is if we come into run a utility for example is address the human resource issues and make sure everyone is there everyone who is there is skilled up properly whether they're young or women or whoever they then we need to up skill everyone so this is what we've heard from listening to people is that we need to help manage young young people manage their careers much better next slide please alright so just to quickly on the research sadly I don't think this is anything surprising to most of you and what it showed sadly I don't wish to be dramatic but there was a systemic failure by the water sector in supporting young people and this is a survey of young people and and service managers in the global south particularly Africa and Latin America things like 40 maybe basically half the employers have less than 20% of staff under 25 nearly half of them had absolutely no plan or strategy whatsoever to recruit young people 50% of job opportunities for young people not advertised and the last two statistics particularly 66% of young people interviewed who are young people who want to work in the sector are still looking for a job and 50% have been forced down the self-employment route because of lack of opportunity so that that was pretty startling but it's really we also found in this kind of depressing show we also found some examples which I'll give you very very quickly now so I'm nearly running out of time next slide please okay so I mentioned partnership at the beginning and these were two examples Bali Bargo is a member of Aquafed actually it's a company in the Philippines and there's this other example of a partnership in Senegal and in both cases it is at different levels they are examples of where young people are being bought in and trained and in the case of Bali Bargo now Bali Bargo is going into schools and starting there and starting to get young people interested in what they do as a utility company and a water provider company at school level and trying to build that interest same with Senegal it's a partnership between the utility and the training school and their training plumbers because there are opportunities for higher education you know doctorates and all this but and actually what we hear from the utility managers a lot in the global south is that we need people who are have got more basic level skills like plumbing for example right it's really really important to keep the treatment plants going so in both cases partnership is key and again in these cases leadership and commitment from people who are managers and they recognize the importance of young people they have been key to the success in these areas next slide please in this case this is about again the problem was you know one of the the problems we found was that there's too many barriers to young people's employment in the sector and I'm sure the young people here many of you that you see it already but there are in amongst the problems there are solutions two examples here one was Brazil and one's more global but in both cases there are kind of ongoing opportunities for ongoing training and ongoing relationship starting from career fairs to attract people to working for a utility or working for a service and then providing training further on whether it's online or in the case of Brazil it's actually one to one so I think it was quite good that we had this the association of sanitation and environmental engineering really taking this this issue of young people's recruitment they clearly understand that there is an issue going forward and you know you've got a kind of aging population of old engineers in Brazil that we need to bring the next generation on so they understood it there so it's some great examples finally next slide please I showed these these two one is in Peru and one is in Myanmar because it just goes to show that really with the right attitude and the right focus from in this case both cases I think it's public authorities again who understand the value of young people in the sector it doesn't matter where you are in the world and where economically a country is and what factors are going on in Myanmar and Peru they have shown us in both cases a deep commitment I think to developing young people and it is an example for many other countries that actually sometimes everyone says oh we need more money we need more money that's not necessarily true in these cases of Peru and Myanmar they have just pulled together the resources in partnership that are available and use them to the best of their ability and in Peru for example they're able to provide training and courses free of charge and in Myanmar they have put in place detailed programs and really thought out what they can offer people young people particularly to develop their careers alright so my main focus was really just to show you that despite all the gloom and the fact that it's difficult for young people there are examples out there there are solutions that we hope others can follow well thank you very much sorry for taking so long no worries thank you so much Neil and it was great that you had already answered some of the questions the last presentation is John from Josh Water Jobs who will tell us also a little bit about his personal experience and the current employment trends once again please answer all your questions in the Q&A box and then next after the Josh presentation we will answer them hopefully in the panel discussion Josh the floor is yours thank you so much thank you yeah there's actually a I could spend the next 10 minutes just talking about what's been talked about already and responding to that but I'll go into yeah what I was going to talk about which will be I'll divide into kind of three different pillars one is what I'm seeing through the website in terms of trends and like where the jobs are and then a second part on the skills that I'm seeing that are in demand and this is also from my own a lot of this is anecdotal to my own experience and having looked at so many job descriptions over the past what 10 years and seeing what's there and how things are changing and then the last part will be kind of pieces of in this landscape to kind of to finer tune the job search and things you can do to to help you help you get a job if you're looking um so yeah so obviously this is a very important subject of mine and recently decided that I'm going to go full in on working on Josh's water jobs the website and leaving my other work behind um because there are so as we've heard the speakers say the there is such a there's already issues around human resources in water and sanitation um and it's just going to get worse and that's because uh of what was has been mentioned with the aging workforce but if you think about there's still 2 billion people in the world that lack uh safe affordable access to water to drinking water and sanitation that's much higher we don't have the people to actually bridge that number um and so it's it's a massive undertaking if we are actually to achieve those goals and but it also has to be prioritized by governments in order to do that um even if the needs are there so anyway on what I'm seeing through the website uh is that um and as you know we're talking about water and sanitation not as much about water resources management and those types of jobs so I'll try to focus more on that but um you know engineers uh are in constant demand and rising um as less people go into uh engineering programs worldwide uh that that's a trend um the demand becomes higher and as we have these increased demands on on um uh increasing access to water and sanitation and wastewater treatment um those demands are continuous and will be on the rise so that that's definitely and I definitely see that through that through the jobs that come across the website um and it's maybe not so much this audience um but and it was mentioned that the majority of the jobs are going to be at the vocational technical level they're not going to be at the bachelor degree level and higher um where the gap is is going to be more at the technical vocational level and that's the need the there's already gaps there um and this is everywhere I was talking to someone from a small town in New England in the US a few weeks ago um and they're having problem finding people um to go to these uh especially rural areas to work in the in the these areas um one thing that I hear a lot about now and I'm seeing a lot as well uh is uh in terms of the jobs and and this is also in the skills part is the the technology kind of technology oriented jobs data oriented jobs because the you know the digitalization of the water sector um is happening maybe not as fast as other sectors but it's happening and so those and those jobs are starting to appear um and then humanitarian water sanitation hygiene is there is definitely a link to that um as long as there's conflict as long as there are disasters those jobs will always be there unfortunately um so those those over the the 10 plus years have been doing the lists have been pretty consistent and even have there's been when disasters happen when wars happen there's an uptick in these jobs that are out there so um and it's been mentioned especially because of what Cranfield focuses on about wastewater um you know the global data quite isn't there but it's thought that are only 20% of the of wastewater worldwide is collected and treated and that's mostly in developed countries so um there's a huge potential there to move in that direction to you know collecting recycling and reusing and we're going to go that direction so the work opportunities are going to be there would have been seen more and more often with kind of all these spaces but the biggest changes come in the wash space the water and sanitation space is wash and climate change wash and climate change adaptation and this I would say is only in the last year or two where there are more and more jobs that are really looking at okay climate change is happening how do we adapt to that in the water utility sector how do we um adapt to that in terms of humanitarian efforts water sanitation hygiene and those jobs uh I just posted a few this morning I think uh or yesterday um so they're out there and they're increasing in number um and then private sector this isn't as much water sanitation but it's it's in terms of the what I'm seeing is increasing the water stewardship jobs which has its links as well but again it's in terms of you know the bottom line of companies is being put at risk by climate change and in other factors so there are more positions and organizations who are helping companies deal with their with their water risk so that's kind of what I'm seeing anecdotally and then on the skill side I do promise to have hard data on this um in the future um as I as I make this shift and have access to a database of 70,000 jobs and combine that for a lot of information on what skills are in demand actually for jobs but in terms of like again anecdotally what I've seen um is that obviously there's no skill set that's a silver bullet um for there's so many different types of water jobs out there uh so there's no one skill that's gonna you know capture everything you can do for all water jobs so it really depends on what um you want to be doing um program management I I argue that this is a really good one especially if we're talking about the level that we're talking you know this audience more or less is you know bachelors and higher for the most part I'm guessing um program management is super important I can't tell you how many organizations uh they look for good program managers and they'd love to have a good program manager who also has a background in water or sanitation um so having that skill is really important that will get you a job to have experience in that and it also helps you as you advance in your career as well with more responsibility because that usually comes with more management um obviously what I mentioned before on you know data technology digital AI I mean even myself I'm a you know social scientist I work on uh international affairs with water like I use chat GPT every week if not every day um so those types of skills are gonna be are gonna be very useful to have to know how to utilize them for jobs um so and I you know I start to see that a little bit in job descriptions um that they want uh people who are skilled in in those uh in those areas um I'm a big proponent of soft skills and actually I hear this a lot from young professionals uh more so than senior professionals in terms of what they would want in terms of in additional training is on the soft skills so negotiation skills conflict resolution writing communication leadership problem solving teamwork those are all things that I think that the more you have of them and the more you can demonstrate that you're that you have them you're good at them the it'll increase your chances of getting a job um so I think I'll end there because my time's coming to an end and I want to get to the last bit um so what can you do I'm just I'll go through these quickly happy to answer offline or in the Q&A about more about um but one um uh it was the best advice I ever got um many of you probably heard me say this before but it's it was a an advisor of mine who said you know those who move create their own luck so if you put yourself out there you go try to talk to people you um network build community all that stuff things happen um so the more you move the more you do the more you put yourself out there the more luck that you create around you uh and more things happen um find mentors uh those senior to you but also your peers because you learn often just as much from your peers as you do from senior professionals and also be a mentor I think that also is an experience that that gives you a lot back and um so yeah find a mentor be a mentor get involved in the youth networks um you can see a blog on my post a blog on my website about all the the ones that are out there but get involved because those provide opportunities that you never potentially could have had before um so I encourage you to engage in youth networks at whatever level um stay busy even when you're not working um I have had times where I uh haven't had work and so that's how the website actually came about however many years ago um but stay busy be productive volunteer intern write learn do social media um just continue to to enhance your who you are as a professional I really advocate for studying job descriptions of jobs that you aspire to um and wherever that whether that's on my website or anywhere else just if there's a job in a few years down the road we'll study those job descriptions see what skills and demand are in demand for them and try to get those skills um and then work on your soft skills like I said you may not find these in any kind of water oriented training but they're but definitely try to own them um because these are still very people oriented jobs in many ways and those soft skills come in very handy uh do informational interviews go to organizations you want to work for and just sit down and chat with people about what it's like to work there so it kind of gets you on their radar and you learn more about the organization um and then look at what is in demand for jobs and go where the demand is um um yeah and then just learn continue to learn wherever you are no matter what the job is how much you like it or not there's always something to learn so just continue to do that work hard um and then yeah most of all stay with us and water and sanitation because we need you so thank you very much thank you so much that was really great advice and I completely agree and now we have I guess also the interesting part and more interactive part where we have our panel discussion uh well it will be around 50 minutes we have here already some questions popping up which is also great and then I would like also first just to give the floor to Chelsea that she is part of like the young water professional steering committee and she's also here with us today um and I think you have some questions she'll see if you would like to ask one of them to our panelists that will be great yeah thank you very much and yeah it was really great to hear from all of our panelists this evening and um something that came up I think a couple of times definitely relevant to um like Josh brought it up and I know Neil kind of alluded to it and I hope that um Francis has been able to experience um this through his um studies and career but that's around mentorship so my question is how can mentorship programs be structured to support skills development and career advancement for young professionals thank you so much Chelsea I don't know which one of the panelists would like to to start well I can have I can have a quick go um because it's something we've we've um incorporated um we've had to go at as part of our um course uh one of the challenges we had was retaining mentors unfortunately um because they although they they found they really enjoyed it um and following on what Josh said um the mentors I think got as much out of it as the mentees did um the uh it was yeah it was it was it was a struggle for people to to maintain to build they could maintain some some level of commitment to it but I think having um having it in some kind of um structured setting where somebody can make uh an introduction for you can can definitely help and who can you know provide a a forum where you can arrange at least some of the first um um conversations that you have you don't have to have in-person meetings necessarily um can certainly can certainly help um so yeah if you can do it through some kind of formalized approach whether that's through the IWA or through um uh a course that you do or you know an organization that can help make that introduction for you and help you set up those first uh and sort of help you find someone initially um uh that can certainly help but there's nothing there's nothing stopping you from from doing it in a more informal way of of approaching somebody on LinkedIn and just saying hey can we have a chat um and that is that is also perfectly plausible and and uh and can can work as well so I don't think there's a single answer to that but I think there's there's quite a range of possibilities that could work thank you so much Heather I don't know if any of you the others like to share their opinion Neil I was just going to jump in from my own personal experience of not being a very good mentor actually a couple of years ago I took on a young guy for the last before the last world water forum from from DRC and the problem was I think two things and it's my fault not his he wasn't clear with me exactly about what he wanted the mentorship program to look like and how I could really help him and I think it had to be led by him actually it's really important whoever you are if you want to mentor and I said this in in the Q&A to someone really be clear about what it is you want first and you need to really think hard about it and then you can find hopefully the right mentor to suit you because otherwise it becomes a bit half and half and I was trying to I was struggling to think of things that I thought might be useful for him in his context and sitting in London I have really not much idea of what life's really like for him so I think mentorship needs to start with the young person and not the other way around and based on your needs and finding someone that helps you thank you so much Neil I think that's also goes a bit what Josh was talking about for us to get out of our comfort zone and get out there I have here really yeah so I like to add a little contribution from a student perspective so usually maybe other students initially so from my perspective before I got to do my MSc I had a few colleagues from my university who had also done an MSc the simple amount of doing so I was able to reach out to them and sometimes able to direct you as in the right corner to talk with because they may know things that connected professionals or recruiters or people who are looking for people to probably offer them support so it's like they could help in the right direction so I think that could be a leading factor if students could know just like wonderful panellists they could just connect to somebody or in a webinar like this you could just reach out to somebody and hopefully as long as it's well structured they could point you in the right direction I'm not sure but I could point you out Thank you so much Francis for your input as well we have here a really interesting question for Megarna that I think it will be interesting also to get it live for all of you and it's regarding that her question is for example institutes like United Nations that are happy to engage with the youth but the internships are normally unpaid with a bare minimum of painted in terms of this concept water jobs and we needed of course to get paid and why is the jobs sector not speaking out against these issues and this is also a way that everyone wants to attract skills and talent but it gets that they don't want to pay the young water professionals so how can we try to maintain this talent in the sector also to not go for other sectors like energy and so on and give them opportunity actually to growth and you ask me if you could also give an answer about this so you can go first I don't want to promise too much I can't actually I can't fully answer this question but it's something I wanted to speak to because it is a really important question I've seen the discussion about pay comes up quite a lot I'll come back to the subject of the unpaid internships which is something slightly different but in terms of just jobs in the sector and even entry level jobs there can be a challenge with pay in terms of them as I mentioned at the beginning we often see that the water sector on the whole tends to pay often less than some other comparable sectors particularly like the energy sector and that's always been a challenge I think the it's one that is really not easy to address it's one thing to say that they should just pay more and on the one hand I would love for that to be true but this is also a very regulated sector and often that pay to some degree comes back to what water customers are willing to pay for water which is also a challenge and if as customers aren't prepared to pay a lot for water services because we have to keep them affordable then that will unfortunately have knock on consequences to how much the sector is able to pay its employees and that is a paradox that we don't have an easy way out of it you know the more that labour costs in the sector then that will have knock on implications for the price of the water you can't completely separate those two so it is a challenge I think the water sector will always to a degree have to depend on the passion and enthusiasm of the people who come into it and their desire to work in this important sector which may mean that they are paid less but are happy with the rewards that comes with that it's not an ideal answer but it seems to be where we are because that's the challenge we face having said that I don't ever encourage my students to take unpaid internships because I don't often agree with the practice of unpaid internships I think they can be they can work in some circumstances but they can be very exploitative and obviously they can be quite geared towards people who have the means to support themselves through the unpaid internships so I did an unpaid internship when I was much younger and I was fortunate enough to have the position to do it they can absolutely give you some good skills if you are not putting yourself in difficulty to undertake one but it does create a divide between those who can support themselves and those who can't so that is also a tricky problem I think there are enough paid entry level jobs in the sector that I think it's not strictly necessary for you to do an unpaid internship in order to get into the sector and I just want to come back to one other question which I think Kirsten had asked on the availability of jobs and are there any examples of jobs with proper career progression in place I think in the UK I think I have seen some examples of that I wouldn't say the water companies themselves are necessarily perfect at it although it varies a lot between companies some I think are much better than others but the international consultancies are increasingly very very aware of this and through their graduate schemes even some of their non-graduate schemes but just sort of entry level roles they try hard to offer different progression pathways and lots of different development opportunities right now I'm also in I'm doing a second one which is the UK water sector regulator I've seen some fantastic skills development opportunities that they offer for their new recruits so as an employer in the water sector regulators, government departments public sector can often offer some quite good career pathways as well so I'll leave it there that's just my thoughts on those too perfect thank you so much that you already joined also to questions into one which is perfect I don't know if any of the other panelists will also like Josh yeah on the paid internship question so last year I took the decision to not put unpaid internships on the website anymore so every internship that is on the website I look very carefully to see whether there is compensation or not and I'm finding that there aren't very many internships anymore that are not compensated I can actually tell you what organizations don't I won't because that's or maybe I should to shame them but and the United Nations has changed it's not there the main United Nations New York with its associated agencies does not pay still but also if you think about how many of internships they're offering in water it's not very many compared to what's out there the couple doesn't maybe at the very most so whereas a city might have more internships than in one city may have more internships than the whole UN does so yes so the UN other UN agencies UNICEF UNDP they pay their interns now and yeah there's a few international NGOs that I'm very surprised at that don't pay their internships but basically everybody else these days are compensating their interns so that definitely has shifted over the years and some I see that they have entry levels the level hourly pay so they're very competitive at least in water but yeah I completely agree with what Heather said about how the difficulty of the pay and I was just doing a little bit of work with the World Bank on this and looking at utilities and how you can actually attract younger people to work in utilities and looking at compensation packages so yes the pay is different but pay isn't the only compensation that you can provide especially younger generation likes more flexibility working from home working from other places so you can look at different types of packages that could make it more attractive with pay being a limiting factor but as Heather said it's complicated but there are other ways to address that I think also just to jump in on that this idea of good pay and compensation in a package is a very some well this is what young people have told me it's a very northern hemisphere thing and in the south what I hear from young people is that they just want a job right not that's going to pay them nothing but it's just basic I spoke to young people in the south through the research we did and they were just saying to me don't talk to me about this kind of this kind of advanced ideas you know on career paths and all these things we just want a job it was as simple as that so I think it really depends on the context sometimes as well in which we speak honestly that's not me my personal opinion I'm just voicing what young people from south told us during the survey work thank you so much Neil we have here a question regarding also from Enri Quieta how can the war sector attract more women because generally it's like a sector and also in terms of engineering that comes from our like male education how can we attract more women in terms of like recruitment, flexi hours and if they can have it like in terms of qualification in the war sector I don't know if any of you would like to answer this go for it Josh so I have a talk on this that I could give some time that I did for Women's Day last year and Neil already mentioned some things in what he said and another great resource is to look at what equal aqua at the World Bank is doing with women and breaking the barriers down to getting more women in the water and sanitation sector what a lot of what I talk about is even more basic than that and it's how you frame job descriptions it's how and I mean the question already mentioned it it's the benefits package in terms of maternity leave and those types of benefits that are that are that women want more and are good for them than exist or just not address because it's been always been a male dominated sector and so but yeah there's a lot on the hiring process how you market the job the words you use in the job description that are not so male oriented there's the hiring committee that it's gender balanced there's a lot of things and none of them are not that hard that can make even just the entry into applying for a job more attractive for women but there's a lot of material out there about how to do this but then it is like where the rubber it's the road is actually having utilities organizations companies actually implementing these in their practices for hiring thank you so much and if any other panelists would like to add something no I think the main when we can also move on they also have here yang from the young water professional steering committee yeah he's here with us thank you so much and also for being here and I guess you also have some questions that you like also like to the panelists the floor is yours I do thank you and congratulations there is speakers present insightful comments this question is more for those who are already in the workplace and find themselves in a situation where their skills development is often driven by or even dictated by their manager or their superior so how do you suggest should young people take charge of their own skills development and how can they realistically do that it's a really good question the simple answer is yes they should but it's but I fully recognize the challenge in doing that I think a lot I mean it's easy to say as kind of someone in a more advanced career state but I always wish when I was younger that I had tried to develop a much better sense of what actually motivated me and to sort of develop skills along those lines you know like really think hard about what you feel rewarded from what motivates you as an individual to try and see if you can design or develop your skill sets in line with that as I say it's much easier for me to say that now but a good a lot of thinking early on about that I think can go a long way but yeah it is really important to think through and to carry that into any interviews you do ask whatever interview you do ask questions about what skills development potential is on offer try and get a sense whether you would have a line manager who is receptive to that a good line manager should try and work with or supervisor or PhD supervisor or whatever it is mentor should try and work with the person to understand these motivational issues and help design something that can work and so whatever opportunity you take it's always good to get a sense of whether the person who will be in charge of you or supervising you during that opportunity will be open to you wanting more skills development and so you can see what that might look like absolutely try where you can to understand what you want and how you can go about that I've got a little contribution on that so following up from what Dr Heather said I believe that particularly with even job offers from what I've said you should obviously have a good understanding on the job description and hopefully what kind of job you're going in for so I think that could be a beginning ground and I think from what I've seen so far some of the companies particularly within the UK with their graduate program scheme they offer a career progression pathway so they have sessions that people are maybe rotated through different parts of the sector or the department and after that hopefully if you're good enough or you have a good understanding you should be given a higher role and I think like she said you should be self-driven but I think the most deciding factor is where you're starting because obviously you're starting from let's say a design engineering sense of approach you would obviously know how you could progress forward you're starting from an asset management approach you would obviously have an understanding so I think people should obviously have helpful in getting a career path Do you mind if I just make one more comment Francisco? Yes go ahead because I've also just noticed a comment in the chat so one again one way I'm obviously a little biased in how I say this but one way for people to take charge is through the educational pathways and if you do have the opportunity to take on a master's degree or another training course of some description one way you can do that so I lead a master's course that is of that type but there are many others and I know I fully recognise that it can be a huge financial commitment and a very very difficult one but do have a look at some of the scholarships and the flexibility of those scholarships that are available because sometimes a lot of people dismiss the idea but there are potentially a lot more opportunities there than you think and Henrietta had a question there about getting women into these educational pathways as well not necessarily just in jobs and again those scholarships can be more flexible than you realise one scholarship programme I'm aware of was trying to make allowances for dependence as well so like to support dependence if a woman is a carer and has children if anybody in family circumstances the scholarship would account for that and potentially still allow for that family support as well as attending university so there are I'm not saying it's common but there are some scholarship schemes that try hard to account for this and I think that's one way of hopefully getting more women into those educational pathways as well quite successful examples on our course certainly Thank you so much and we'll be talking also here a bit about skills and we have a question here from Nicole that in addition to use the words climate resilience or climate adaptive what are differences in skills in requirements or jobs that you are seeing now when people are hiring for those climate change skills and then also maybe some skills that you think it could be required in the future I don't know which one of you would like to answer this Do you know on the question of skills of the future and I know this is one of the questions we were going to come about I would turn this question on its head a little bit actually and again part of the inspiration for the career pathways project was again by listening to young people and actually observing the way they work and they want to work and their mindset to work that's what influenced our project and made us want to do it in the first place and by that I mean sometimes down to simple things like obvious things like digital skills which young people have in abundance compared to again someone in my generation I don't want to characterise it but we heard for example during the pandemic we had utility managers in Africa saying that for the first time the pandemic forced them to go on to email it's that basic they went on they set up their own Gmail accounts for the first time they didn't have any WhatsApp groups they set those up and necessity for them to advance in that way just imagine if they had a young person working with them who is digitally literate could have done all of that for them in 5 minutes alright and there are still organisations you know there is a huge difference between the way we see some of the companies in northern Europe for example and how advanced they are and other places compared to places in the global self where we still have a situation where we have managers who still are not just barely using using email for example the whole mindset that young people have to work and the tools they have whether it's mirror boards or this kind of thing and how young people are just totally capable of working virtually and getting things done that way in a way again that I think people like me are just not very good at that's the kind of thing so my point is that actually young people should be showing and be actively promoting the skills you have and your mindset to work and presenting at something different to what already exists just in general terms and I think that's really important and I hope that the young people you don't lose sight of that and you really understand that you are at the next level and the next wave in way working life is going to be and you should be setting the tone for that now thank you so much I don't know if any of the others would like to add something if not then we also have here a question from Nandita which asks what have your experience been on moving out of a niche subject into the wider scope if you suggest trying different types of jobs in the wash sector or do you suggest staying in the niche and then being more like an expert in that niche in that specific subject I think that's also a quite tricky question jobs yeah I mean the thing is there's no right or wrong to that because we need both we need specialists and we need generalists we need people who are bigger picture thinkers that can connect the specialties so they are optimal and how they work together and we need the people who work in niche subjects because we need a high level of expertise in those so there's no right or wrong it's basically on your preference about where you think you can add value the most that's how I would see it I don't know if either you like to say something Francis or Neil well they yeah as you said there's not an easy there isn't a one right answer to that I think there's nothing wrong with if you've tried something and you find it's not for you to try and switch there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and a lot of you know employers are quite understanding of that I have mentioned in the Q&A that in some of the bigger companies I'm thinking more of consultancies here but I know some water companies have tried this as well they sometimes offer that that you can try out different things like you can work over in this bit of the company for a bit but then if that doesn't work out for you you can move over to this other bit of the company and try that there's a lot of different ranges of options whether it's something operational or something planning or something you know there's multiple pathways so there might be something you know within that that you can try out different things anyway depending on which company you're working with but even if that's not the case I don't think there's I don't think it's a bad thing to try out different options or to try the same topic from different angles but yes you do at some point you run into the balance of having to build up a skill set in something so that you know you can build up your career and move forward rather than just continually moving sideways but yeah a little bit of experimentation I think is not generally a bad thing thank you so much I have to admit that I completely agree with that as well um Francesca can I just make a general point overall because of course with sessions like this we hear all sorts of really really good examples of what works but again if I'm one of the young people young person watching this now and I'm looking for a job and I'm thinking well why the hell is it not happening yeah one of one of the solutions is quite honestly and this is where we have to get into the advocacy even more is that there is that phrase isn't there that those who pay the piper call the tune right which means it's an old English phrase but it basically means those are the money uh money talks yeah and the funders in the sector whether it's development banks or the UN agencies I think there's more responsibility on them quite honestly to when they are awarding uh money and grants and funds to service providers that they have to make it a condition more really strongly make it a condition about career training and development I think that's one area that can really make a big advancement it's not a new idea but I see it all the time whereby you know grants are given and it should be a condition that training and development of young people is part of that we're starting to see it more now in PPP contracts that private operators have whereby quite rightly the public authority is saying as part of this contract one things you have to deliver as what service improvements are also upskilling of of the workforce as well and an increasing opportunities for them and that's quite right it should be in a contract so there's a direct opportunity for the public authority to really take it seriously and make it a condition of action otherwise we're going to be sitting here for years just talking about what works in small pockets but to make that big leap I think the funders have got a much bigger role to play than they do now and I don't think they take it seriously enough either excuse the rant but it's not just anger that I'm talking through it's about actual observation and I see I can say Henrietta is great that's great right so there's an example of where the EBRD is doing it yeah is doing it in certain cases and I think that's great and that's more of it but I don't see it enough from the operator side we don't see it enough where it's a condition of the grant of the service but it's great Henrietta thank you for your intervention thank you so much I also saw hearing the questions Francis that you like to answer one live regarding the development countries if you can share a bit about your experience right yeah so reflecting on that question my personal opinion is I think it relates more with the interests of the students or the candidates just let me let me sorry let me interrupt you a bit but I'll just read the question because I think some of you will not be able to have it so the question from Anne is like if we have suggestions how to reverse brain drain for developing countries and make water graduates to go back and work in their countries the floor is yours now Henrietta Francis thank you yeah so my opinion is that I feel it's more of a personal or it's more related to the candidates or the students more than the wider picture so obviously somebody coming for high learning is obviously coming for some reasons it could be to upgrade their skills it could be to potentially get to have some international experience and exposure it could be also to return to the home country and contribute to addressing water and sanitation issues in the country so if you call it more of a brain drain I'm not sure how that but I think of course it depends because if the candidate is done and hopefully there are the opportunities for them to probably get into jobs in the home country because I remember for some of the students that we've had some people struggle to, they mention that usually they struggle to adjust when it comes to returning to home country and working for companies because usually maybe sometimes the difference of the huge knowledge they've received and also trying to apply to a small scale so I think it depends on your personal interest and I'm sure there are companies that also are in developing countries and also as well as well as UNICEF UN and all these companies that do projects across their developing countries, you could actually position yourself to really work with them or do something like that hopefully if you want to get back to that setting, I hope that helps Thank you so much, I don't know if the other panelists would like to add something regarding this question I can see Josh thinking a bit No, but I guess it was just that it is a real problem in some parts of the world I was just doing some work in the West Balkans and there the number one problem that water utilities have in terms of human resources is that people are moving out of the country elsewhere in some of the West Balkans so it's a real problem and again it's just how do you make jobs more attractive to people to stay in their home countries or to meet the human resources needs but this is in certain parts of the world it's very much an issue that has to be thought about carefully how to address that's also about bigger issues than just water sanitation as well Definitely, thank you so much Josh as well we have here a question from Madi regarding also in terms of like languages skills as the West is a sector mainly governed by English speaking some French speakers in this case for example in the West sector find it tough to interact and how can we bridge this gap in terms of like different languages you are muted Josh, I don't know if you wanted to say something but Yeah, I mean bridging that guy it's a good question there is a I would argue that I mean and maybe because there are say sub-populate I don't know like sub-sectors within WASH that are dominated by a certain language actually because there is a large French humanitarian WASH sector if you will because some of the biggest NGOs that work on WASH are French speaking countries where there is a lot of WASH work being done and so just seeing through the jobs lens and the website the second number, highest number of WASH jobs are French and then you have a Spanish and then you have a Portuguese but it's all based on the countries that they're working in so but bridging those gaps usually if the heads of the missions and the people on the ground these countries have to speak the language of those countries so yeah I'm not sure about how to bridge that that but I would say that it is there are different areas that are definitely siloed by language though Yeah, definitely if you also all of you allowed me I can also share here with my experience because I'm a PhD student from Portugal but I'm doing my PhD in Denmark and I'm working with the utility and it's definitely even if everything is in English you really need this bridge also with the Danish language to work with other stakeholders so it's definitely something that it can be taken care of in the future we have here also Yas? I just wanted to say one thing which is so the language issue is very very interesting I guess it's not just English and French and other European languages there's a number of Asian languages also I think that sometimes get left out of the discussion or get parceled off I guess but it relates to the last question which you may be getting to which I think is how will AI shape water drums in the future actually this is one of those ways that AI may shape water drums in the future because AI language translation has come a very long way and although I'm hesitant to fully recommend it now there are elements of that of the bridging between these potentially these different language barriers that AI tools can potentially help to solve because you know they can produce things in different languages that with much less effort I guess but just to come back on that as well there are it's very difficult to see at this point exactly how AI is going to shape things there will be there are obviously a number of analytical data analytics that are going to be huge I think that's already been mentioned the the water sector in the UK is swimming and increasingly swimming in data and crying out for jobs in skills in data and analytics but that's obviously a more western perspective on it not all water sectors will be at that level but I think there's from a data analysis point of view there's going to be a lot and the potential to visualize data huge amounts of data in a more accessible way as part of decision making processes for the future of you know water sector planning I think that's where it could make a very very big difference but yeah it's still probably difficult to see exactly how those effects will play out thank you so much Heather it was really great that you connected the two questions I don't know if the other panelists would also like to add something regarding AI and how this will shape the water jobs in the future and what you think about that I'll just I'll chime in a little bit sometimes I worry that I'll be replaced by AI within a few years based on some of the things I do with it I'm like wow that's what I spent like 10 years learning so there is a quote that somebody said I think I saw on Twitter or something and it's not entirely true but I do think it is that you know we weren't a lot of jobs aren't going to be you're not going to be replaced by AI you're going to be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI and so that's something that I think is I've like already you know I use it now and a lot of the work I do and so if you know how to use AI that already puts you ahead of people who don't and where the future is going it's a reality that it's going to be integrated into the work that we do whether we like it or not in the future so being comfortable with it and utilizing it I think is an important skill to have looking towards the future definitely thank you so much I don't know if it's any of you the panelists that would like to say just some last words before you wrap up I guess not so thank you so much for this great panel discussion I think we have really great inputs and some solutions also because sometimes it could also be in these webinars that let's say we talk a lot but then we don't really come up with anything so hopefully we'll have some solutions some young water professionals also good luck for all of you in terms of finding jobs, internships I will also ask you all the panelists to put in the chat also the way for you to connect in terms of LinkedIn and all the social media so everyone can be able to connect and share also all the information we will have this webinar as I mentioned in the beginning it's recorded and it will be shared in the IWA network so you can also have a check there in terms of upcoming webinars and events we have three in April the 10th of April we have one webinar in terms of improving sanitation in South Asia we have a lecture on the 16th of April regarding micro and nano plastics within environmental technology and then we have the webinar on the 24th of April about managing disinfection and byproducts for safe order for events we have two great conferences I think in the next day exactly thank you Erin two great conferences coming up we have the IWA leading edge conference in Germany in June and then the World Water Congress in Toronto in Canada so I hope to see many of you also there join the network it's also as we talked about in this webinar is a really great way to get out of your conference zone you really need the networking for jobs to get to know the right people to share knowledge learn a lot from different people and more experience and young ones as well so I also bring professionals into different disciplines that it's important to learn within the broader water sector so you can use this code for 20% of this count for new membership until the last day of the year thank you so much for all the panelists thank you so much for the participants it was great discussion it was really really interesting and as Neil was saying at one point we had 160 participants which I think is really really great for these kind of webinars if you won't still have some questions feel free to type it and we'll try to answer them at the end of the webinar and send it to the different panelists thank you so much, connect on LinkedIn and I hope to see you around at some webinars or also some events within IWA thank you so much, have a great day rest of the day for some of you maybe and thank you so much and good luck for all of you looking for jobs and internships thank you so much