 Yes, thank you very much. I hope you can see my slides. And this is the new member induction for Asian IWM members. And because we are planning to have every year one induction meeting and this one induction meeting for different regions and this is for Asian members. Thank you for joining us. This induction is not only about telling you, sharing information about how you can engage with IWA and how you know IWA better, but also to let you know who is behind the scenes and then when you have some questions to specific ideas or issues, you can reach the right people in IWA. Okay. And to start with, I would like to firstly introduce the staff members in the region, in the Asian region. I'm the regional director for the Asian and Oceanic region, I'm Hong Li, and we also have in Greater China the manager, Mr. Wang. And then in the South Asia, we have an Indian office. We have Dr. Charles Joseph and Jane. So they are in Indian office. It's the managers in the Indian office. We also have a contact in Sri Lanka in Beijing. So, if you have questions, you can reach in the region to these people. The main idea about the International Water Association is, like you know, it's a membership association aiming at supplying a platform for the water professionals to exchange ideas to share leading edge technologies, the knowledge and across regions, across sectors, and also connecting with other communities within the water sector. In Asia, there are, like you know, there are a lot of people in Asia and they also have specific challenges in Asia. So it's very nice if you can share among each other also with IWA, your ideas and challenges you are facing. A very general picture about IWA is that we have, till now we have over 70 years history already. And through these years, IWA has grown into the top water professional organizations globally. Currently, around 10,000 members, they are from universities, research institutes, engineering and consulting firms, utilities, and many more. And all these members, they organize themselves into 50 specialist groups, like several of our friends here mentioned that they want to join different specialist groups to contribute. They also have specialist groups covering all areas of water related technology and management. And they also have four cinematic programs. Those are Basins of Future, Seize of Future, Water Sanitation and Services, and Digital Water, and many other programs as well. As you know, IWA also has publishing, IWA publishing, they publish 19 professional journals, and including the top academic journal in water, water research. I think you all know water research. Currently, IWA has three main offices, London as the headquarters, Nanjing China as the global operation, and China, India, we also have a regional office, very active regional office. I would like to now introduce my colleague, Barbara, to give an introduction about the membership to you. Barbara, please. Barbara is the membership development manager, and she sits in London office. Thank you, Hong. Good morning, everyone. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. So one of IWA's strategic goal is to have a more engaged, diverse, and well-balanced membership base. And from this slide, you'll see our numbers. So currently, we have over 7,600 active members. Now, IWA membership comprises of three different types of members. IWA subscription comprises of three different types of membership. IWA includes corporate membership, university membership, individual membership. So that individual membership includes professionals, students, and retired members. Now, so you can see from all of this collectively, there's over 7,600 members globally. Next down, we have 320 corporate members and 62 university members. In addition to that, we have 53 governing members. Now, the governing members are organizations that represents the water profession in their country, and their mission is to leverage the IWA in their region. In addition to that, we also have 19,000 plus network members. Now, these members are not subscribed members, but they are active on our connect platform, giving ideas about issues within the water sector. Within the numbers that I've just highlighted, just to break it down a bit, we have China representing 18% of the membership with currently 1,372 members. The year follows with 580 members, which is 7.6%, then we have Japan with 340 members. Malaysia, we have 114, Sri Lanka, 95, and the Philippines, 92. And we say the recently concluded digital water Congress helps to put our numbers up. So this year we've managed to reach more members using the digital platform we were able to reach more members and that has helped to increase our membership base in the region. Okay, so at the beginning I mentioned that we are intentional in having a more diverse network. From this slide you will see where we are located. Western Europe, as always, has the most of our membership base. China and East Asia is following steadily, however, we are now seeing growth in the likes of Latin America, Middle East, and Africa. And I think this will continue to grow with the strategic plans that we have in place. So where are we located. Now, this slide represents where our office is located, as well as where our members are. So, there is, okay, so we have started with our edifice here in London so we have the edifice here as well as the IWA publishing. Now, IWA publishing is the home for all the journals that get produced by IWA, including the water research that, well, the water research that Hong mentioned earlier. We also have the IWA global operation in China, Ninja in China, and then we have the IWA regional office in India. Now, the orange, sorry, the green stroke yellow dots represent our individual members globally. Well, the individual members, as I mentioned earlier, comprises of student members, retired professionals and professionals in the water sector, aspiring to be in the water sector and those who have an interest are not yet in the water sector. The black locator point represents our corporate members, and the red represents our academics, universities and academic members. Lastly, the teal color is an indication where our governing members sit. And as I mentioned earlier, governing members are organizations that represent the water professionals in their country. Next slide please. Okay. So it is safe to say that we can segment or membership benefits in two areas. So we have the publishing aspects of our membership benefits, as well as we have the networking and professional development. So if we start with the networking and professional development. So your membership allows you to enjoy special rates to our events, IW events. So, generally at events we explore frontiers of science and technology with pragmatic innovative solutions. So this gives you an opportunity to network with persons within the, within the water industry. It also gives you the membership also gives you full access to IW connect, including participation in different specialist groups. Now, in addition to that, you also have the opportunity to participate in membership committee of the specialist group so you're able to grow within the grow within the specialist groups. We also have the option to participate in online dialogue. And there is also an opportunity to access IWA learn, IWA access webinars through the IWA Learn platform. We have what we call a source magazine that is delivered to our members quarterly. Now, though you are as a member you're able to submit any articles of interest to our marketing and communication team. And if it is relevant to the publication at the time then you can get that published in the magazine. So our membership sector. So we are divided, we are in every aspect of water. On the screen you will see a breakdown as to where our membership me in the lives. The bulk of it is within the academics. And we have, we're trying at the moment to increase the membership in utilities it is actually in the second place in terms of where most of our members lie, but overall from the screen you will see where we are in terms of membership. Now in terms of any questions, I will put the IWA membership email address in so that you can contact us at any time. I will introduce you to my colleague Daniela who will give us some details about membership engagement journey. Daniela. Yeah, just to let you know Daniela is our director of strategic programs and engagement in IWA. And so she will give you an introduction how you can engage in IWA and Daniela please share your screen. Thank you. Okay, thank you Hong. Just checking if you can. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yes you can. Okay, great. So, well, I have a problem the screen is here I have a second. I'll make the presentation looking at here because if not I cannot see the slides. Sorry, I'm presenting from, not from my PowerPoint from our NET, I'm sorry for that. So I want to be looking here. Anyway, my name is Daniela. I will be talking about how you can engage in IWA activities once you become a member. So we have some steps that usually our members go. Of course if you join our network when you are a very experienced professional this might be slightly different, but usually our new members start by accessing our publications. So we are actually in partnerships participating in our activities in our specialist groups in our webinars in our events. And also doing online reading. In a second stage when you are already familiar with our IWA resources with opportunities that are provided to you. So you can engage in events as a presenter as a chair of a session, reviewing conference papers, you can become a member of our communities you can share content in our IWA connect social media let's say it's kind of water Facebook and don't remember who label it as a water Facebook. And you can join our many communities, specialist groups, regulators, young water professionals. I'm going to be talking about this a little later. So once you become more familiar with all these opportunities and you engage in all these communities, then you can start to contribute to propose new outputs in those communities. You can write content book chapters blogs position papers white papers. You can contribute to organize at the way at the way events, you can propose workshops, webinars courses. You can active participate in peer to peer leadership exchange in our programs and communities. Further when you are a really experienced at the boy member very active, you can become an influencer you can be distinguished with the IW fellowship. I'm also going to talk about this a little later, you can become a manager, a manager of one of our communities. For instance, our specialist groups you can be a member of one of our string committees for instance the emerging water leaders committee if you are under 35. You can represent either boy nationally and you can also join either boys Congress program committees to shape the content and the format of our conference our forums, and our events in general. We can also finally join either boy strategic council and support and engage setting either way men agenda main agendas. So, our communities, I would say that our one of or maybe our most active and larger and most active communities are our specialist groups. The idea of the specialist groups is to connect water leaders to bridge the gap between science practice. So, those groups they connect people that have the same interest that they're working in the same topics right. So, the main activities that they organize they are self managed. We are either boy secretary we support them but they are self managed they have a management committee that defines their activities, but usually their activities are conference and workshops. They release books journals and reports. They have online discussions. They collaborate they partner with each other online either boy connect is used to that. If they decide there is something really important that they want to study further. Maybe it's a topic that is is a trend at the moment, then they can develop test groups if it's something that should be studied in a longer term. They can develop working groups. They usually provide webinars and training activities about this particular topic that they are focused on, and they also publish newsletters. We have 50 specialist groups currently here you have some of them, you can find all the list of all of those specs specialist groups in our website. How are the opportunities to engage with these specialist groups. As I mentioned you can contribute to test groups and working groups on a specific tasks or sub topics of the main subject that is the focus of the SG. You can contribute to their publications, you can participate and also initiate discussions in this either boy connect pages. You can organize attend and present in their conferences they all have at least one specialized conference, and you can propose new initiatives and ideas. You can also nominate be nominated to the management committee. So, in this case you can contribute in a leadership role to the management of the group and to the organization of the group activities. So who you should contact if you are interested in joining one of these specialist groups or more than one because if you want of course, usually nobody does that but if you want you can engage in the 50 ones right, but usually people engage in a few ones that are related to their work. So you can contact Russia. I think she already presented herself here right Russia. And you can learn more about that in our website. If you go to communities and either way specialist groups. Some other either way communities we have our governing members we have our young water professionals and we have our fellows. I'm going to discuss a little further each one of those communities. The governing members we have currently 53 governing members all around the world. They are usually organizations that represent the water professionals in their countries, and their mission is to leverage at the boy at the national level. They are usually organizations, for instance, local national water organizations but sometimes if the country does not have a strong organization or any organization, then sometimes a group of professionals from different backgrounds from different institutions. They represent themselves together to become the governing member. This is not the most usual format that that we have but it's also possible. So, as I mentioned we have currently 53 governing members the new ones from Asia are from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. We are discussing a new potential governing members in Thailand in the Caribbean, Mongolia, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Argentina. Today they those governing members they get together annually in a governing assembly to discuss to to elect at the board and to discuss the main agenda to be addressed by the Association and since they are they are getting together today later on in their governing assembly. So who to contact if you as an institution are interested in becoming an either boy governing member, you can contact our colleague Caroline passes this is her email, and you can also learn more in our website. This is either boy Young Water Professionals Community. This is really important community. If you are under 35 years old, and you join at the boy as a member, you are automatically considered an either boy Young Water Professionals Member. This community acts in three areas and three pillars. One is engagement and exposure. It's a very important way to not working if you are a professional. So you can join the emerging water leader committee, it's less than 15 people in this community that leads the activities of this community. You can organize or support organizing events. You can lead an either boy Young Water Professionals chapter in your own country. This is our chair for either boy Congress is in our last digital Congress, our first and digital Congress last May. All our co chairs and all sessions were Young Water Professionals and they were the responsible for summarizing wrapping up the sessions. You can participate in either boy strategic console, and you can get inducted to some of the specialist groups that may interest that view. If you are a professional development, you can organize the conferences, you can facilitate and participate in the emerging water leaders forum, which is the main event of this community, you can use our online resources, you can dialogue with our seniors professionals from our network and learning from their experience, and you can network with our over 30 country chapters that already exists. You can have leadership development activities for those professionals that are in beginning their career, their journal journey in the water sector. So in the other sector so you can get introduced to the leadership program, you can get mentored by sector work leaders, you can develop your competences in trainings. And you can also enroll for instance in professional visits. As I mentioned before the main event that is organized by this community is the emerging water leaders forum. It happens with our World Water Congress, but because of all this COVID situation it didn't happen last year. So we are having it virtually this year in, I think, less than two weeks from November 9 to November 11. It's going to be three days of discussions. We are very confident that it's going to be a very interesting and a good opportunity for networking for you. So if you want to have more information about that, you can contact our colleague, I think she also presented herself. I'm not saying her name because it's difficult for me so it's Kasia. Here you have her email, and you can also go to our website to get more online information. If you have some particular inquires about the forum itself, you can write to the general email address I double young water professionals dot I double HQ dot org. I mentioned before our chapters so a couple of members either way, members that are young under 35 years old from what particular country they can get together, and they can become young water professionals chapter in these countries. So we already have the China young water professionals chapter the Japan and the Philippines young water professional chapters. Those are branded chapters. Okay, we can have also non branded chapters when they are in the, let's say in the process to become a branded chapter, but they still didn't meet our requirements so they can already act as a chapter they just cannot use our logo right, but this is kind of first step to become a branded chapter. And currently we are discussing to have some to forming some branded chapters in Iran in India and in some other countries in Asia. To contact also cash in this case to if you are interested in form. Another way chapter, the fellows community, the fellows are professionals usually experienced but not only sometimes we're not some some of our fellows are younger. So, they are recognized for their long term outstanding contributions to the global water sector, and also to support supporting either boys mission and objectives. Okay, so it's important, both to be. It's a great recognition for both the work as a water professional in general, but also for the work within either boy. So we have now 209 fellows, and we have 46 distinguished fellows. So those are even more experienced people, and they are recognized for these achievements and their contribution to either boy mission. We are engaged in our strategic programs. We are currently working with different strategic programs. We have the water wise cities program, either boy launched a few years ago I think it was 2018. We launched the water wise cities principles. So it's a vision of how to become a city that manage their water, it's water resources in a more wiser in a more wise way, and you can endorse those principles if you go to our website. These cities and utilities haven't already endorsed it, including also individual practitioners. Okay, we have our nature for water project initiative, it's discussing nature based solutions they use of nature based solutions to water supply and to storm water management and also to waste water management. We have our climate smart utilities. This is really important. Now we are going to be presenting our climate smart utilities initiative at COP26 next week. This is aimed at supporting utilities in their journey into becoming climate resilient. So we have two components in this climate smart utilities initiative, the adaptation and the mitigation component. And we have, we built this initiative on for pillars, a community of practice to discuss experiences and share knowledge on both mitigation and adaptation. We have a vision that we can also endorse more or less as the water wise cities principles. We have these web presence, our website where we share resources and where you can go there and learn more about the topic. And we are also programming recognition program to award utilities that are actually successfully engaged in this journey towards being water resilient climate resilient. We have our water policy and regulation agenda we have a very active. Regulators group within a double way. So this group also has a biannual forum, the regulators forum the last one was in June this year, and we're going to have the next one in Copenhagen in 2022. So in this program we had this CWS city wide inclusive sanitation project that we run from May 2020 to June 2021. The main output of this project was a call to action on regulating for city wide inclusive sanitation, and these project will be done next year. We have also the digital water program, it's a program that cost cross cut, almost all other programs, because it's a very hot topic to be discussed. It's aiming at supporting utilities in their transitioning to become digital. This is a very active program with white papers with webinars. If you want to know a little more about that you can look at our, you know, apps website you're going to find a lot of information about that. And finally we have the innovators platform, which is a platform that is being developed to support us in our tasks to bridge the gap between science and practice. What are the opportunities that you can, you have to enjoy this leadership areas, you cannot join the discussions on our either way connect network. We have the groups of all these initiatives, you can contribute and lead in working groups in some of these initiatives in regional dialogues. You can write case studies for instance, you can participate, collaborate and even lead regional and international forums webinars trainings, you can become as an institution you can become a partner in this programs. You can provide resources so we can make those resources available through our platforms, you can generate a content guidelines reports white papers as I mentioned before in the general digital water we have a series of white paper papers that is being released. And so doing all these, you can act as a catalyst for innovation, knowledge sharing and best practice. Who you can contact you can contact me. This is my email Daniela dot Benfica at either way HQ dot org or our manager of strategic programs. She I think she introduced herself in the chat already either way publishing. We have a branch of a bunch of other way which is either way publishing. As Hong mentioned before, we publish a journals, including the most important journal in the water sector which is a number one in Scopus and web of science ranking. This is what research but we have also other journals that are more focused in one particular area of the water sector sector. We publish books from usually 25 to 30 books annually. And what are the opportunities to gauge with either way publishing you can submit articles, you can become a reviewer and in the future an editor, and you can also become proposed a book on a very specific topic. So you have here the contacts that you can reach out to if you want to know more about the opportunities within other way publishing. I think Barbara mentioned before we have also the source, the source is a magazine is published not by the way publishing but by other ways criteria. So it's very focused on global trends in the water sector. So we publish opinion articles, we publish new item news items, we have articles, and we also have online articles that are published. You can contribute with this magazine with news to be published with case studies to be presented with opinion pieces. And if you want to know more about that as as a member you receive the source so you are able to read the magazine but if you want to publish something you can contact Keith Hayward. He's our comms and marketing director but he's also the editor of the source so he's here you can find his email address. Now, my colleague, our colleague Celand is going to present talk a little bit about either way events. Do you want to share your screen Celand. Yes, we will share screen from here, but before Celand's presentation. I'm just wondering if you have questions or discussion points you want to share already. And I would like to have a couple of people saying a few words with the participants. I'm going to be taking a break for the presentations because too many presentations I guess you will lose the concentration. Too much content in a short period of time. Yeah, anyone has questions, comments, suggestions, raise your hands or type in the chat. Hi, there was a question about how to engage with the digital water program. I put some information in the chat and the link so how to join so just so you all know you can join the IWA Connect group. There's another way to interact with the program you can write blogs you can write articles, you can produce video. We also recently launched the podcast series so you can also propose a podcast a webinar, or as Daniela was saying, a white paper. So all this information is in the chat and in our website. So, but if you have any questions. Samella also the project of the month, I think it's important. Yeah, so recently we launched this initiative where we promote one digital project per month. So if you are involved or you know about a project that is promoting digital transformation, just let me know. And this is a possibility to show it as digital project of the month of or on IWA Connect but also on our newsletter. So yeah, we, I put all the information in the chat but if you have any questions, write it down or send me an email. Thank you. Thank you, samella. Anyone has any comments on the ones already presented suggestions questions. No. All clear. Okay. And now I will share screen for Zealand to present. But well I'm sharing screen if you change your mind you want to share something feel free to do so. Yes. Hi, everyone. This is Zealand. I'm the global events officer here at IWA, based in the Nanjing office, and I'm here today just to give you an overview of the IWA events. One of the main ways which IWA facilitates the exchanges of knowledge best practices experiences and leadership is through many other IWA events. So at IWA we host about 40 events per year, which means that's close to one every week. And most of them are organized by our members in the form of specialist group conferences or the young water professional conferences, as Daniela mentioned previously. And other events supported by IWA are our strategic partnership events such as the Amsterdam and Singapore Water Week, or any other international events that would want our support. Our flagship biennial conferences are the IWA World Water Congress that happens every even year and the Water and Development Congress that happen every odd year. These events are hosted by the IWA Secretariat in-house, which you can see on the map that we have many World Water Congress throughout the past years and recently the Water and Development Congress. And we host them in different cities and countries almost every year, so it's a really great opportunity for all of the water sector professionals and our members to engage. Another area for our strategic partnership event that's also held in-house is the Leading Edge Technology Conferences, the LET and the International Young Water Professionals Conferences. At IWA we provide full support for specialist group conferences. Here's just the list of our upcoming IWA supported conferences in the Asia and Pacific region. Once we receive the proposals from specialist groups, IWA we will provide the full support and providing publicity, event guidelines and trainings for organisers all across these specialist group conferences as well as the Young Water Professional Conferences. So you can see that we have a few upcoming in the next year and also the year after. Overall, so if you're looking to engage in an IWA event, you can attend an event, propose papers or workshops for an event, volunteer to chair sessions, partner to an event, volunteer to be a part of the organizing or program committee, or simply propose an event. There are plenty of opportunities here with IWA events, so I really encourage you to be involved and get engaged. More information about IWA events and how to organise or propose an event is available on the website here. On our website and also the IWA events director is Kizito and his email address is listed there. And lastly with the IWA awards I would like to introduce you is that IWA we present awards and we're committed to encourage and recognise the special contributions and achievements of our members and the water sector professionals. These awards are acknowledged and presented at all of our flagship Biennial Conferences mentioned before. Nominees will be judged by a panel of judges who are experts in the area. So here's just the list of our iconic key awards that we present to appreciate and also to encourage our IWA members. And I think that will be all from my end. Yeah, thank you Cylent. This is just one to show you that all your like leading knowledge, technologies, innovations, best practices, the specific solutions from your region, you can share through our communication channels like the website, IWA network, the website, the source magazine, the IWA publishing online, and then this connect and also some of social media like in China we have read chat and social media you can share all those with the wider global audiences and exchange with them. And this is very much again I want to show that in Asia we have a lot of water challenges because we are most populated and also a lot of developing countries and the emerging economies in the region. We have specific challenges as well in the region. So I would really very much looking forward to collaborate with all of you to help contribute to the improvements of water services in this region. And with that, I want to introduce two special guest speakers to our induction meeting. And the first one is Noha Yadi Abdulla. She is very very active in IWA and she used to be the board member for IWA. Currently she is the associate director for UTM International in Kuala Lumpur and associate professor in UTM. And she's also council member for the Malaysia Water Association, which is also IWA governing member in Malaysia. And she is US Ashene Fulbright Visiting Scholar. She has been awarded by IWA as IWA fellow and she's also awarded L'Oreal UNESCO for Women in Science awardee. And she's also international fellow for Japan Society on Water Environment. And I will also introduce the second one so that I don't need to switch back my presentation. Our second guest speaker, Mr. Yang Weila, he's also very very active in IWA and very passionate young water professional in our network. He's currently the head of Philippines in Iowa Utilities Asian Pacific region. He's co-founder for the Philippine Young Water Professionals chapter. He's also currently management committee member for the IWA specialist group for intermittent water supply. And he has been awarded as the finalist for 2020 Young Leadership Award for IWA. And he's also awarded Mike Ruth Chen fellow in 2019 Bears Environmental Leadership Program, UC Berkeley. So first I would like to give the floor to Yati, we call her Yati, it's easier. And then, and Yati please, I will stop share, please share your screen. Hi Hong, thank you very much. I will try and share my screen now. Okay, so I hope you can see it. Yes. And then. So Assalamualaikum and a very good afternoon, a very good morning, good evening everybody. So I believe we are in Asia but we have some colleagues also from the London office. So thank you Hong for this opportunity for me to quickly share my experiences with the International Water Association. And I put it as this title, build it before you need it by, which I mean is the networking and also the long lasting friendship between me and the IWA family. So this is the secret to success I would call it. And see here, these are my circle of trust and then I think since my student days as a PhD student, no actually as an undergraduate student at UTM University Technology Malaysia. I have been introduced to International Water Association by my supervisor during that time. So if you can see these pictures, it's filled up with everybody from the IWA specialist group, who is who is also my PhD co supervisor professor from Newcastle. And then you can see here, the former offices of IWA. You can see Tau Lee, Ganesh, his wife Basu and then Natalie, Gustav Olsen, and then Professor Furumai and then Helmut Kreuz, the entire board of directors when we had our board meeting in Spain. Of course, again, when I organize the Young Water Professional Publication Workshop in Johannesburg. This is the beginning of my involvement as the chair of Young Water Professional Global Steering Committee for IWA back in 2014. So the left photo is showing when I was being interviewed as the new chair of YWP. And then the right photo, my photo during the IWA Development Congress and exhibition in Nairobi in Kenya. So being with IWA, I took it as part of my co-curricular activities, especially during my PhD tenure for the past three years between 2009 until 2012. I really love this quote and I think I would share with you that water has a memory and carries within it our thoughts and prayers. As you yourself are water, no matter where you are, your prayers will be carried to the rest of the world. And that is what has happened to me with my IWA family during those years of involvement as the Young Water Professionals and then now also serving the IWA as one of the fellows. So this is my journey just to share with you briefly. Back in 2002, I was IWA student, I held the IWA student membership, which was paid by my PhD supervisor. And then from 2009 until 2012, I commenced PhD and continued on as IWA student member. In 2010 until 2014, I was involved as one of the steering committee representing Malaysia and received the Young Water Professional Award in 2012. I was elected as chair for the Global Steering Committee in 2014 until 2016. In 2017, I was chairing the scientific committee when we organized the IWA Aspire Conference and Exhibition in Palo Lumpur under the auspices of IWA via collaboration with the Malaysian Water Association. And then from 2018 until 2022, which is about next year, I am currently one of the IWA fellows. So basically it all started with a single reply to an email looking for volunteers to become part of the Young Water Professional Committee members back in 2010. So basically, during my PhD years, I was really looking for a platform for me to learn as to how might I develop my professional network. So what you seek is really seeking you. You are in the very right place today having this induction meeting and this is the opportunity for you to really build your professional networking through a global as famous as IWA. From my involvement, I have been experiencing a lot of things and then the traveling was really immense and then I truly enjoyed all of the adventures that I have had with the IWA and as well as other things that follows throughout the years since my involvement with the IWA. So as you can see here, a lot of congresses are being conducted at various cities, the development congresses are being held also at various cities. So you get the opportunity to not only be involved and be volunteers in conferences as mentioned by Daniela just now. But this is the moment when you actually get to immerse yourself in different cultural experiences and also to embrace the diversities that IWA had to offer in each of the different cities that you are visiting for the congress. So this is my first meeting back in 2011 that time Professor Helmut Kreuz was the president of IWA and then as I mentioned, really it was a simple reply to the email looking for volunteers for the young water professional. So that is that was how it all began with my involvement with IWA and then I would like to truly highly recommend and encourage everyone new members in Asia to really take this opportunity to build your professional network before you need it because this is the platform where I met water and wastewater experts to whom they have helped me a lot with my PhD journey, PhD studies, and then when I started my full-time job as a as a professor at university, we wrote papers together, we organized events together, and then we co-supervised our postgraduate students together, and then we learned about mentoring and then I have had them as my mentors for so so so many years and then later we become friends, and then I get the opportunity to come to Malaysia and vice versa. For example here our former president Professor Glenn Degger, he hosted my US ASEAN food ride visiting scholar scheme at the University of Michigan for four months between December 2016 until March 2017. So I first met Glenn back in 2010 at the Young Water Professional Conference in Sydney, and then since then he has become one of my mentor in IWA and has been my host at his university back in 2016 to 2017. So the long term relationship, the long term mentoring that IWA may provide is something that you don't want to miss when getting involved in an association like IWA. Of course, I had the opportunity to work with Lian, the past president of IWA and all of the women's supporters of water subset this you can see Hong there as well. This is when we had our meeting, I think in Tokyo during the World Water Congress three years ago. So instead of being part of an association, IWA is, I think the only platform that I have been a member for so so long since back in 2002 up until today. I have been a pretty much loyal member of IWA and I really make it an opportunity for me to learn and build my professional networking as well as long lasting friendship with everyone within the IWA network and family. So this is just additional. What is it that I found throughout my involvement with IWA by using those skills to transform networking into blossoming friendship with myself and all of my young water professional colleagues worldwide. And then how might we do best, while at the same time learning from the IWA. And then the why should we build network because it is a critical part of our professional and personal growth and then being with IWA gets you to meet people and build relationship with them. And then open up opportunities for jobs, for fellowships, gaining information, career enrichment, and then you get special invitation sometimes to their exclusive events like today, for example. And then if you are an academic, you get the opportunity to get to know all of the experts that can be invited as an adjunct professor to your university, and etc. Simply to have coffee and learn from the meaningful experiences. And then of course IWA encourages your visibility on social media platform, and then please do follow IWA connect Facebook page and everything leaked in to keep connect to keep your connection alive with the IWA members worldwide. And as I mentioned, I truly appreciate my experiences meeting all of the awesome mentors within the IWA specialist groups, for example, and then the IWA fellows, they helped me to build my relationship and then I receive mentoring and coaching from them to improve a lot of skills, helped me to publish my papers as to how best I can lead the project, if there's any opportunity for research grants and then industrial collaborations and of course to volunteer at IWA conferences. So these are the things that I did. Love is the water of life sees through me and then obviously number one is for us to join an NGO. The only thing we need is to pay the fees and then it is up to us as to how might we use the platform for us to build the network and to really get the fullest benefit of being a member. And I think that's all, Hong. Thank you so much for this opportunity and I welcome any questions you can email me at norayati at utm.my or you can find me on LinkedIn and we can keep in touch. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, it's amazing, very inspiring. And there are a lot of also shared good memories with me as well. Love it. Yang, your turn, please. Thank you so much Hong, Yati, that was indeed wonderful. I am now going to share my screen and talk to you about my experience in the IWA. I'd like to say that this is really a story of my journey, but also what I really want to talk about this afternoon with all of you is my love story with IWA and it is a continuing experience of really falling in love with the association as well as the members that make up this wonderful network of people. Well, why diversity? Why is diversity so important? And why is the diversity that you find in IWA such an important part of the experience of membership? Number one, as we all know, collaboration and knowledge sharing in this very connected world have no boundaries and we can see that already in I suppose in the COVID era that we do a lot of things virtually and that will seem to persist in the future. But also diversity is more than just people coming from different countries or from different races and ethnicities. Diversity is also about having a multiplicity of disciplines because that's the only way we can attempt to solve complex problems. You know, these wicked problems that we are now facing, they will only get more complicated in the future. And for us to have a shot at really attempting to solve these problems, we need multiple perspectives and diverse disciplines. But most importantly, on a personal level, I believe that diversity broadens not just our world, the people we meet, the places we go to, but also our mind and makes us more open to learning and experiences. So how can IWA support you in this journey for more diversity in your world, in your life and in your experiences? I want to share with you five things that I went through in the IWA since the very beginning that I started being active, which was in 2015, not very long ago. And that was when I became part of this consultation group called the Early Career IWPs Engagement Group. This helped IWA boost its membership offerings for young water professionals with less than five year experience. And I worked with a number of other early career IWPs from all over the world to come up with a report. And I'm happy to say that the key recommendations that we came up with in this report were adopted in IWA's social media platform, which we now know as IWA Connect. So this is a very good example of how our ideas, you know, as young people, we have all of these crazy ideas, but IWA gave us an opportunity to see that idea come to life. So what I want you to take away from this is that in IWA, you are never too young or never too old for that matter to make an impactful and lasting contribution. Now I want to talk to you about my experience of leading a team of YWP Rapporteurs. Rapporteurs are basically the conference reporters. They would be the ones going from session to session, taking notes, what are the key messages, key insights from this session, and then reporting it back through a conference report. I led a team of those YWP Rapporteurs for certain themes at the Buenos Aires Congress as well as the recent, well not very recent, but the latest World Water Congress in Tokyo. And the top picture that you can see here was when my co-leaders and myself went up to the stage on the closing plenary to deliver the final key messages of the key themes of the World Water Congress. It was an exhilarating experience indeed. But I have to echo what Yati said here. The people that you meet throughout these experiences, the people that you work with in these Rapporteur teams, the people that you listen to in the conferences, they will become your lifelong friends and indeed your contacts for life. And I think that working in diverse teams, the way that I have through these Rapporteur teams really brings out the best in all of us. Aside from being a Rapporteur, I also go conference commando every so often by holding workshops, sharing sessions or co-chairing them and facilitating these sessions in these conferences. I had the pleasure of leading an innovation workshop in the International YWP conference in Cape Town, as well as co-organizing the Emerging Water Leaders Forum in Buenos Aires. And very recently, with the World Water Congress that we have done online, I was fortunate to become a chair for one of the sessions. And for me, what's so important about working together with a diverse group of people in facilitating these sessions and workshops is that you have to be humble enough to accept criticism, accept a diversity of ideas. And sometimes that is important for opening up our perspectives about how to do things. For example, in the picture that you see here, this was the Cape Town innovation workshop that I led. I may have been the leader and main author of the workshop and main facilitator, but I listened to my teammates how best to deliver the workshop, how best our participants can digest. And so the diversity that you find in IWA and working together with other people breeds that kind of humility to accept inputs from others. But it's not just workshops and sessions that I have had the privilege and honor of organizing. I have also organized entire conferences. This began in 2017 by being part of the Marketing and PR Committee of the International YWP Conference in South Africa. And in a couple of years later, I was appointed as the youngest conference president of the Efficient Urban Water Management Specialist Group Conference Series, which we held here in Manila, Philippines. Now, my seniors at the specialist group said during the closing program that the Manila Conference was in the top two, top three of the 20-year history of the Efficient Conference Series, which was a huge team effort. Not just for me as conference president, but from everyone else, basically, who supported in these conferences. Now organizing a conference is a very, very different and difficult animal to manage altogether. Lots of calls, lots of emails, lots of things to put together. And I wouldn't have been able to do it without the diverse team that I had supporting me behind the scenes. The lesson here is that diversity, for diversity to work for everyone, it demands that you as an individual must step up. When I was invited and appointed to be the conference president for Efficient, I could have said no and said, I don't know about that. I'm not confident about my skills. I'm not sure I'm the right guy for the job. But they challenged me. My seniors in IWA challenged me and said, we will support you and we will not let you fail. And that became true indeed. It's still one of the best experiences I had because of IWA. And finally, as you may have heard, it's very important that you also become part of specialist groups because this is where we exchange ideas, collaborate. And if you have the opportunity, maybe in a couple years time, do raise your hand to become a part of the management committee of these specialist groups. Now the intermittent water supplier IWS specialist group is one of the youngest groups in the IWA family. And one of the senior professionals, the former chair of the specialist group, Bambos, actually reached out to me and said, would you like to be part of the management committee. And I said, no, because it's not my specialization. I have worked on a few projects in IWS, but it's not my core competency. And yet, I did not want to betray that trust that he was offering to me. And the precise reason for their invitation was because they wanted to reach out to the young water professionals of which I am a part. They accepted that invitation and applied to become a management committee member. And I have not regretted that decision ever since. And so what I encourage you to do is to immerse yourself in the wealth of diversity in IWA. Even if the specialist group is not your cup of tea, go ahead and join it because you will learn something new. I have joined over 30 of these specialist groups. I receive emails from all of them. I read the newsletters and they're fun to learn from. So now I want you to leave with three points on how you can start on your journey and make the most of your time with IWA as well as to start writing basically your love story with IWA. One is to be open to opportunities. A lot of the opportunities that came throughout my journey in IWA were offered to me. And I could have said no, but I accepted the responsibilities and there were always people behind me supporting me throughout the way. IWA will not offer you these responsibilities if it did not see something in you and if it did not trust in your abilities to deliver. Second is always be curious and I mean always again going back to even if something is not your area of specialization, go ahead and join that session. Go ahead and join that specialist group. IWA is here for your learning. And finally, don't forget to bring it all home because that ultimately is the reason why we joined this association. We want to be relevant for our country and our communities. And that was the main motivation for setting up the Philippine Young Water Professionals as an official country chapter of the Young Water Professionals Group. In closing, I would like to welcome you to the family and your love story with the IWA begins today. Thank you. Thank you so much young, very inspiring. And thanks again, Yati and Yang. I hope everybody who is relatively new to IWA learned a lot and also inspired with what have presented by Yang and Yati. I would like to suggest if you are all able to open your videos and then don't be shy to talk, just share your experiences, asking questions, challenge us and then share your suggestions, anything. Yeah, for all the participants, please, if you are okay to share videos and talk, feel free. Yes, Ashwani. Yeah, hi. So first of all, thank you very much for both the speaker. It was very interesting for us. And I would like to just have one suggestion and that I've already discussed with the IWA Indian chapter team as well. And they are agree with me. So, could it possible to have one as best this group, especially for water quality and health, because I cannot see any group, especially related to water quality and health. There is no group in different sector in water, but if you like you mentioned that ACI is suffering more water crisis. And most of the, like in India, if you see, we are suffering not only for water depletion also suffering for the contamination different kind of contamination like arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, chromium, you know, magnesium, different area have different kind of contamination. So if it's my just humble suggestion, it could be possible to have one specific group that is especially for water quality and health. Thank you. I asked Daniela or Samyela or Roshna to say a few words about it. Before that actually there are quite several specialist groups touching the topic, but it's not like a specific a bigger scope of water quality and health because there are quite several, for example, health related water microbial ecology. And then the metals and related substances in drinking water, there are a lot of specialist groups linking to that. It's a bigger area which carries several specialist groups, but I like Samyela and Roshna, they are directly responsible for specialist groups. I just wanted to say exactly what you say that are several groups, working groups and specialist groups that are addressing this topic. So my first suggestion will be to go around IWA Connect and see when you can find some connection to this topic. And maybe we could plan a webinar on the topic, we could do many opportunities, there are many opportunities to address this topic but I would suggest you can just check the groups that are already talking about this because water quality and health, it's a very big and general topic. Yeah, I agree but we have like in my expertise, I cannot find a very specific group according to my expertise. So something like we have like one group of hydrogeochemistry or something like that, or mining impact or anthropogenic pollution or something like that. I think that's where the people working, because you know, be in a specific group is good to be able to discuss and other things. Sure. All right, sure. Thank you, Ashmani. Super. Yeah, thank you. Yes, Walter. I saw you raised the hand. It disappeared again. Hello, everyone. I just like, first of all, I just like to echo what Ashmani said on sharing thanks to all of the speakers. So we learned a lot that personally get me excited. I'd like to anchor on one phrase that young shared the last phrase of bring it all home. And so my question would be if I would want to see these studies were by the way, I am a new corporate member so basically working in a company so I'd like to see how my knowledge can be helpful to create value to our company, right? So my question is, if I'm interested to see these studies or the knowledge in IWA was able to help create value for certain companies. Where would I be? Where should I look? Are there anything of that sort? Thank you. Thank you, Walter. It's very practical question as though maybe we start with Daniela if you want to share a few thoughts on how we engage companies in a way that through the existing engagement opportunities and also just to give a few points and other colleagues can give more ideas and maybe Yang also can have some ideas because Yang works in a company in the utility so I think he can also share some experiences as well. Sure. Just one question. You work in utility, that's it? Waters and wastewater utility? Both are water and wastewater utility. Okay. Yes, that's right. Well, I think you get plenty of opportunities both as a professional like an individual professional because even if you are nominated by a corporate member, you are considered also an individual member, right? So I think you have plenty of options both as a professional by yourself and also as a company representing your company, right? So a couple of examples as representing how you can engage representing your company. So we have this climate smart utilities initiative. So, in this initiative, we started two community of practices, one on mitigation and another one in adaptation. You can join this community of practices to discuss the experience that you are passing, or if you are not acting at all in that, let's say, then you can learn and you can understand what other utilities are doing, what are the mistakes that they committed, what are the successful experiences. The same we have, we are planning to have in the citywide inclusive sanitation program that we are starting now in 2022, in the beginning of 2022. And the idea is to have utilities engaged. So focus, the first part of the project we focus mainly focused mainly in regulators, but now the idea is to have regulators and also utilities, joining the program. And then how to implement the concept of citywide inclusive sanitation to ensure sanitation for all, even if, or especially using decentralized solutions don't sort sanitation. Okay, you can also your utility for instance can endorse the citywide, the, the water wise principles. We are now starting a project with some utilities in France to understand how utilities that endorsed this concept a few years ago, how they're actually applying the concept in their operations, right. So, also, we have a lot of many special groups that work in topics that are really related to utilities for instance the water losses is one that is really active. Okay, so you also can can join this group. I don't know if some will have something else to share. Oh, we will have we will also start in a utility engagement strategy that is being built in the last year. Okay, so we want to increase the number of engagement opportunity for utilities, and one of the leading opportunity is to participate in the utility leaders forum in the World Water Congress. This forum is aimed at the leaders the decision makers, because we have, we are aware that we have plenty of opportunities for at the professional level for utilities employees professionals, but not not as many opportunities in the decision making process. And I worked in a utility for 18 years before joining I the boy as a staff member. And so I know that even if the the the professional level is really engaging something if we don't convince let's say our leaders our decision makers, we cannot really promote changing right. So we are also aiming to address this this audience. I don't know if someone has something else to add. No, I think you cover all. Thank you Daniel. Yeah, you want to say a few words. I actually used to be to work for the company that walley the Walter now works for my knee lead. So I know that my knee that has a very long history of involvement in the I w a including not just participation in conferences but also in trainings and hosting conferences as well. The largest one for example was in 2012 the water loss conference and then my knee lead was also co host in the 2019 efficient. So there's many different kinds of benefits. I don't think I don't recall either as being part of my knee lead or my previous job Metro Pacific that we did a you know cost benefit analysis of being a corporate member to I w a but some benefits include number one if you host conference there's an obvious monetary benefit because you have to arrange your own sponsorships. That's one layer another is PR in marketing it's really good branding for for your company. But what I find is the biggest and most important benefit is professional development for staff. And I think that's something that HR of the respective company corporate members should pay attention to how much knowledge are they gaining are the members gaining from I w a resources from the source from other publications and attending conferences that's a very important benefit. Thank you for thank you young actually from the regional perspective because I'm not the regional director for Asian Ocean Ocean region. So what are maybe we can discuss further about how you can engage in the regional activities as a company or as you may do as well. And just to mention that in the next World War the Congress we also have a utility leaders forum, which if your company is interested you can contact Daniela and about the details. Yeah. Thank you thank you. Any other comments, suggestions, sharing a follow up question. Yeah, and first of all, thank you very much for a lot of tips on where to engage. I would like to follow up on the question of success stories. There are already success stories for companies, gaining value, increasing revenue perhaps or reducing OPEX perhaps coming from engagement or interaction within I w a and if there are case stories, a case studies like that or success stories like that. Where would it be populated and so that I can just check and look. I have thought about the source magazine because this year I'm from this year I want to actually encourage the Asian leading companies to share your success stories in the source magazine as well. And now the examples, of course, and of course in doing events you will definitely see the shared best practice, best practice and stories. But if you would like to write the source article also, we can review and see if we can publish the source magazine as well. Thank you very much welcome. And I also have actually newsletter for the Southeast Asia region, which also features some of our new corporate members and regional highlights. You can discuss further and you can share your thoughts and then I consider we can feature the Manila water to our communication channels. Yeah. All right, thank you very much. Any other comments, suggestions, we are almost the time so I really would like to have the last comments or question to come in. Ashwani you have a comment. Can I ask again, can I ask again because if someone wants to ask, they can ask. Yes, please. Yeah, yeah, my just my one question regarding the internship or exchange program, could it possible to have some exchange program because I believe in it to have some exchange program between one country or one region to another region. So they can exchange their knowledge, exchange their technology, exchange their concept between each other. So because I was lucky when I was got Erasmus Moundas exchange program, so I spent like four years in Italy, there I learned a lot and then I got Marie Curie so I went in South South America. So I work there as well in the mining region, especially for ground water problem so that that I would like to have more opportunity like this for the young professional to have this kind of opportunity if they get the opportunity to visit some other countries and work with the IW members, like one month or three month programs, they can learn some new software or new technique or they can share their own knowledge with them so could be very good for us. That's a very good suggestion. In fact, before the COVID-19, we did discuss about special training internship program within IWA, but that was only initial discussion. We haven't come up with the detailed implementation plan yet, but then with the COVID-19 it stopped. But this is a very good suggestion. I think maybe Daniela, if you want to comment and also maybe bring to your team to discuss, think about the possibilities. Yes. Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, I think it's a very interesting way to achieve professional development. Myself, when I was much younger, I participated, I'm from Brazil and I participated in an exchange program in Japan, I stayed 10 months in Shiga Prefecture in Japan. The Shiga Prefecture is a twin prefecture with my state in Brazil, so they have this program for almost 50 years now, I think. It was a pretty interesting opportunity. So yes, I agree that this is something really interesting. And the main point is sponsorship, of course, because this is a costly program. But yes, we can for sure start to thinking about that and to look for sponsors to start a program focused on exchanging. The only point that I think it's, even from my personal experience in my exchange program, is that we have to develop, to build this, to design the program in a very careful way. So the experience is not only for to be aware of things that we could do if we had money to, but to have experience that are actually feasible to be implemented, right? Because in my particular case, it was such a different reality. This was back in 2001, 2001-2002 that I stayed in Japan. So economic reality, Brazil-Japan was so different that I would say that for my personal knowledge, it was pretty interesting, it was a great opportunity. But I was nothing that I saw in Japan. I actually applied when I got back to Brazil, you know. So I think this program must be designing a way that we ensure the knowledge will be effectively applied, right? But I think it's really important, your suggestion, and for sure we can consider that in our plans. Yes, and if I can just, just a little bit. Just connected to this discussion, a bit more broad comment. It's about the collaboration between the International Water Association and Cranfield University. There is a Cranfield University excellence scholarship. So Cranfield is providing 15 full free scholarship across the Master of Science courses that you can apply and the application I'm checking the website now are open until the 25th of April 2022. I'll put the link, I'll put the link in the chat, but I think this could be of interest, especially for the younger members. Wonderful. It's also joined to initiate you between IWA and Cranfield, just for you to know. Yeah, yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope you find it very, very helpful today. Again, like Yang said, that's your journey today and share your love stories with IWA. And I also look forward to all your shareings with us and please feel free to reach out to the staffs, to anybody you feel like I need help or you want to share and also to reach out to me freely and enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.