 Dear graduates, students, friends, family, honoured guests and colleagues, good afternoon. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the graduation ceremony of the Sanitation Master's Programme. I now give the floor to our rector, Professor Eddie Morse. Thank you very much, Annik, and I would like to welcome all of you here. First of all, those who travelled from far away, because I think that's always a bit of a challenge, and also those that are joining us online. But I think the most important guests, of course, are the students here. I do hope, and I do expect that you all have the same expectation, that is that you will get your diploma today. But before you get that, there is still a last hurdle to bypass, and that hurdle is the people sitting up front here a little bit. I've been working quite hard, I think, in the last one and a half year. I think you have experienced, say, the remainder or the last part of Covid a little bit. I'm very, very happy that you also experienced the majority of your time here without the restrictions that Covid had here. So I do hope that that time will not come back as it has been. I don't think it's completely done yet, but I do think that we have learned a little bit better how to live with the situation like that is. Now, for me a reflection to Covid is, I think, especially of interest to your specific topics and what you're doing and how you're contributing. Because I not necessarily think that Covid is so important, but I do think that health and sanitation is a very, very strong link to one another. And by that, I think that we really need you. And so I'm quite happy that you are able actually to step away after today from this learning process. And I hope to see you practicing what you have learned. Because in the end, that's what's all about. Sometimes it can take longer. Maybe some of you will follow with an PhD thesis. But in the end, all of you, at least that's my hope, will contribute to what we need in the water sector and especially also in the sanitation sector. So I think that this year is a special year. I think soon in November we have World Toilet Day as one of the events. But then later on in March we have the UN Water Conference taking place, first time in 40 years. And I think in that conference, sanitation for all is one of the important topics that will be addressed there. So I hope that they are looking for commitments in there. And I hope that you all will be part of those commitments and that you will help us together to see how we can bring sanitation to the next step. How to do that is something I need to learn from you because I'm not an expert there. And I hope that I can see you working in the field, any place in the world, and to see what you are doing there. And maybe also to see how we can collaborate together with the IG, but also with your future employers or your institutions or your family or your community, where you're employing actually what you have been learning there. So with that I would like to thank Anik and also open the floor to Damir to say a few more words to you. He showed me his speech, so please grab yourself because he's going to tell you a lot. Damir, please take the floor. Four pages only. So dear graduates of the fourth cohort of the Master of Science Program in Sanitation, academic class 2021-2022. Dear guests here in the auditorium of IG Delft and guests who are with us online. Dear professors, mentors and other staff, welcome to this graduation ceremony. On behalf of the academic staff of IG Delft, supporting staff involved in the program and all our guest lecturers, I'm expressing our appreciation of this ceremony on occasion. I'm delighted to witness and take part in this very important and special day for all of us. This is a day that you will never forget. It is special for you because finally your 12 months academic adventure comes to the end. I have no doubt that for most of you it was 12 months of hardship, 12 months of facing the challenges of being in the new country, getting used to its habits, meeting unfamiliar people, eating strange food, drinking water from the tap, experiencing the effect of climate change. Some of you have seen the snow or ice for the first time, being away from home and the loved ones, etc., etc. It was not easy on you. This period was also challenging, as Eddie said, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was and is still around. But we are happy that we could interact with you in person and teach face to face during this period of your study. We were also happy for seeing you doing your research work. Most of your outside of the Netherlands did your work, co-supervised by our partners in Africa and Asia. These kind of things we took for granted before, but apparently we do not do it anymore. That's why we are all grateful that after two years of emergency teaching, we could return to more or less normal situation with your cohort. I'm also sure that you are at least a little bit aware of the magnitude to which your stay in the Netherlands affected and in particular will affect your life. Exposure to the modern educational and research facilities of IGDELT, embedded in truly international setting, is rather unique experience, whose positive effect and memories will be with you for a long time. Besides elevating your knowledge and skills in the field of sanitation, you expanded both your professional and personal networks, you made new friendships, learned about the countries and habits of your fellow participants, and without doubt became in general even better persons. While we also recognize several positive changes on you during this period, we are genuinely curious about what will be your impact on your professional environment and the impact of you and your employer on the society and beneficiaries of your work. As you may know, we are interested to hear about your successes and we have a possibility to provide symbolic seed funding for you to start up some of your projects, but you have to be fast and do it within one year after this graduation. Today I'm looking at you, the finest mid-career sanitation professionals that your countries can offer, the champions in developing and implementing sanitation, as we define you and I'm very proud of you. Take a look at your fellows. Can you see the difference between how they, how you looked back in October last year and how glorious and feel you feel and look today? What's the difference? A few more minutes to go and you will turn from students into alumni of IG Delft, joining the family of 23,000 fellows for more than 160 countries. But you will also become alumni of the Global Sanitation Graduate School and will join alumni from 42 universities and 20 countries who followed pretty much the same curriculum as you did. Today you will become one of the 58 graduates of the MSC Sanitation Program at IG Delft. As we speak, around 600 fellows studied the same sanitation curriculum at universities in Africa, Asia and Latin America as part of the GSGS. So welcome to our alumni community. You have no doubt fulfilled all the academic requirements to get awarded the MSC degree from IG Delft. Some even did it with distinction. It's a secret yet. However, your mission is not finished. You may think that you are off the hook today, but actually you are not. In fact, your mission is just about to start. Now when we know you quite well and you know us maybe even better, it is the moment to think how we can stay in touch, benefit from the momentum created right here in Delft and extend the outreach of education through you, the future ambassadors of IG Delft and GSGS, champions in developing and implementing sanitation. This is the fourth and final edition of the MSC Sanitation Program that we proudly started in 2018 with invaluable support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are grateful to all our staff, our partners and guest lecturers who supported this program from the start. Also to other supporters like the Dutch government through the OKP program, Rotary International Scholarship, World Bank Scholarship Program, National Waters Research Corporation from Uganda and several other donors. The good news is that this program is embedded through MSC program in Water and Sustainable Development under the Track Water and Health Profile Sanitation and we are also proud to share today that 28 students in the primary edition of this program which will start on the second November have selected the Sanitation Profile for their study. This clearly confirms the continued interest for quality education in sanitation which is one of the main objectives of the UN SDGs. Furthermore, I do not want to take more of your valuable time today as the chain of festivities is in front of us and I will finish my address by sharing with you our appreciation for the unusually high level of academic output that you created during your MSC studies here in Delft. I wish you all the best in the future and hope that you are really enjoying every moment of the day. Thank you. Thank you, Damir. You can have a seat because we are going to watch a video. We continue with a video message from Dr. Roshan Shesta, Deputy Director at Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. Hello, friends. Big congratulations on your achievement. Finally, you made it. I am so proud of you. Obtaining a degree is a massive milestone in our lives. It is also time to set up a new target to achieve another milestone. You are now a master in sanitation which means you are in the land of opportunities and you all know the world remains significantly delayed in achieving the sustainable development goals of universal access to safely managed sanitation by 2030. We have achieved so far only 58% of the target and we have only eight years to go. We need to accelerate the speed which is not possible only by money. We need experienced professionals like you who need to engage in the public sector, private sector and development agencies to support the country to accelerate the progress and sanitation. I have met many IHG graduates from Africa, Asia who finished this course. I am so proud to see all those graduates effectively serving in the sector knowledge and skill gained from IHG. I am sure you will also have such opportunities. The course itself is crafted in such a way that you can address and fit in any issue those are related to sanitation. I hope you have completed citywide inclusive sanitation, courses and non-ceo sanitation program. Similarly, you must have also gone through the studies on technological innovation and different service models. These are some of the hot topics and new in the sector attribute practice on the ground. We at the Bill and Melange Foundation last year have supported the demonstration of citywide inclusive sanitation in several countries in Asia and Africa. We are working on transformative sanitation technologies that kill pathogens and recover resources. Those technologies will be available in the market very soon. You should learn all these. Your role will be critical to scaling those innovations in the coming days. We will reach out to you as per need. You are now a member of Global Sanitation Graduate School Alliance. You are not alone. Once you are back home, please get in touch with your authority, development partners and show your strengths. Find a forum where you can discuss and present your skill. Make aware the stakeholders that you are back. This is the way opportunity will follow you. Please be in touch with us, share your thoughts and ideas on how we should act and contribute to the sector. Finally, I thank all the colleagues from ICDEL for the support that you have provided to all participants. I wish all the best for your next journey and safe travel back home. Thank you. We now continue with the part you've all been waiting for, the actual awarding of the diplomas. I would like to invite on stage Professor Rudjanovic and Dr. Claire Furlough. To be honest. We start with Dennis Agea from Uganda. Mr. Isaac Akoit from Uganda. Ms. Morena Aydit Akorut from Uganda with distinction. Mr. Julius Anavaite from Uganda. Ms. Folake Monsurat Babalola from Nigeria. Mr. Rashid Kakar from India. Mr. Sena Tesfai Kalbesa from Ethiopia. Mr. William Mutalen Konde from Zambia. Mr. Dennis Antony Ooyok from Uganda. Mr. Musad J. Sanjang from Gambia. Huswayo Tembo from Zambia with distinction. Thank you. Claire, you can take a seat. And Damir, you continue with the next item. Right. So this is our small secret. Every year since I think this is now seventh year of tradition that we with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation decide to award the best sanitation thesis award. And for that we make a little jury who judged in this year as it was also last year. It's Claire and I'd like to invite Claire and Konstantina to the stage as a member of the jury. So let's first say what is the award about? The award is for the student, graduate, who gets this funding to support stay of the student if necessary at IG for a couple of months as a part of our special program and also to attend a conference of her or his choice in the coming year where the student would or graduate would present the results of their research work in terms of paper or presentation. So this year we had quite outstanding gear as you could see that we have two distinctions, but we had even more excellent thesis which satisfy the criteria. And we had in a short list the four of you selected and then in the last round we came to top two and then it took us probably almost an hour of arguments and we decided not to fight because we have to stay here and to live together. So we decided that the two thesis which came to the top we could not decide which one is better than the other and we decided to give the award to both of them. And now our graduates they don't know who are they they may guess, but their name is written here so I would like to invite these two graduates to share the award. Please come here behind and accept it. Accept the award. Super. Enjoy it and thanks for the protocol to accept that because this is the first time we do that. This is as I said the last formal edition of this program and there are a number of people here in the audience and also who are not here with us who really contributed to this program and made it very special and made it possible. We started from scratch we designed the program in this particular room five, six years ago accredited for six years and delivered for four years now now we are part of the new program and we are happy to be that. So since this program is closing I would like to invite let's say a key people that we work together all these years to make this possible. I would like to invite people to the stage all together and I made a little present made by myself and my wife which is a logo of the Global Sanitation Graduate School which is supporting this program and I would like to award this little personal present to all staff I would like to invite first the module coordinators Emanuele, Tina where? Shirish Francisco should come come to the stage Acorsua probably not here Tina is not here so forget, sorry if I forget but I would like also to invite the staff from the program committee two important people, a key people Mahrez Vakpayin professor and professor Jul Palia please come also to the stage other members of the program committee please come Carol Bianca you were all the time there do I see anybody from planning okay Carolin so these are Carolin Sinti class in the camelis you did from the lab he graduated last year from the same program so I have for for you here they are all handmade and then different so if you don't like the color or something you can swap two professors will not get it they will get something else from me so first I would like to share it with you I have here for all of you I give a brown to Tina so you can change beautiful blue Claire must also get the brown Claire was the person who was really supporting this program very heavily for all these years and Claire was coordinator of the program and Claire thank you very much she was research coordinator and then since Tina came to institute two years ago she took it over and I would like to give to Tina as research coordinator also vice-vector don't get anything beautiful one for you and thank you for supporting us all the way you didn't get anything so two professors which were really support to us and support to me and shared loads of supervising a large number of students but also providing us with guidance especially with experience from Teodelf but also from Arcade and her appointment also in Amsterdam so what we created we created the category of awards of global sanitation graduate school and we called them ambassadors so the first ambassador was Brian then Daniela and some other stuff from there but also Jose from South America and ambassadors are people who really contributed to this program and promote sanitation in any of the ways that's why we called them ambassadors and these are awards that we created from the base material and are designed by two female artists from Bosnia and each is unique wood which is used here is waste food from different countries the metal here is scrap metal from the water supply pipe which is also a base material and then there is a little a little plate here with the name and the picture of the first graduation cohort of this program so I selected probably nice colors for you thank you very much for everything thank you ok ok sorry for this one can we invite the students at the end to join us come I need the best pieces of work ah yes of course yes thank you Damir we now continue with a nice surprise video from some people you might recognize good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to all successful graduates of the IHE sanitation course my name is Christoph Lütti from AirVoc in Switzerland if you will remember I taught the first module in November last year on sanitation systems I'd like to congratulate all of you and wish you the best in implementing more sustainable sanitation systems in your countries and hope that you progress well in your future careers bye bye all the best hi everyone congratulations on your graduation today this is Louise Madeleine we did research method seminars together it's always a great privilege to work with everyone explore loads of different methods and I hope you had a chance to put them into practice in your field work many many congratulations and good luck with your future bye hello I hope you remember this topic and maybe you also remember me I definitely remember you because you were a fantastic group and I usually enjoyed the one day workshop we had on the topic of sanitation safety planning now with this video I want to congratulate you for your master's degree that's major achievement be proud of you and wishing you all the very best for whatever projects and initiatives you will be working on in the future bye bye hello everybody excellent to see that you're all graduating and completing your courses I taught you project management in April May it was really exciting to see you all because I inspired with your expertise especially validation, leadership and friendliness so wish you all the success and enjoy the day bye congratulations with your master's your MSc it's well deserved my name is Felitim Bost based in Netherlands although currently I'm in India and I had the privilege of lecturing you on two topics one is PPB's and the other one is sustainability and sanitation enjoy your day and wish you my credits of working thank you yes dear students you succeeded congratulations with your master you must be so happy that you're finished now looking forward to hear wherever you are you're going to use all the knowledge and skills and expertise of this year whatever in the world I hope our paths will cross somewhere in the humanitarian emergency response it would be lovely to have some of you there to be able to use all your skills also in this particular humanitarian emergency response setting it was a pity that we met only three days online but the four days we were able to see each other live so it was very nice to see each other face and have one day together all the best and hope our paths will cross again and enjoy that you're a master now hi students this is Melissa Hepner from Portland State University I led the leadership and science module just wanted to say congratulations and good luck in the future hello students in case you've forgotten to slum drainage I believe that you're all about to graduate my congratulations on achieving this particularly in such a difficult time I realised it was really awful trying to work online and I really regret that I wasn't there to help you as you approach your way to the project but well done for making it anyway and all of the best as you go out into the world and change it for the better congratulations hi ladies and gentlemen Sheila I taught you academic writing back in December and January which seems a long time ago now I'd like to congratulate you all on your outstanding achievement in obtaining your master in sanitation degree you've all worked really hard and you really deserve it good luck with your careers and don't forget to see her at IHG have a safe journey home nice video wasn't it dear graduates congratulations to you all also from my side this almost concludes our program for today I hope you've enjoyed it and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for making this afternoon possible I hope you've enjoyed your study experience and that you will stay in contact with our institute as an alumnus furthermore I need to stress that the diploma is a unique issue handle it with care in case of loss it cannot be issued new copies so we strongly advise you to make photo copies in a scan of your diploma and supplement for safe keeping after the closing of the ceremony I would like to ask all the graduates to calmly follow the cortege outside and gather in front of the building so that we can do again some group pictures thank you and I'll see you later outside now I give the floor to our rector Professor Eddie Morris so congratulations I think and I think that with this there's a new start I think it's also time for celebrations but before we do that I think there's also a little bit of a serious note related to that and because with the diploma that you received you are entitled to call yourself a master in science I do hope and I expect that you will also become an ambassador of sanitations but there are also some traditions in the sense that you have to follow also the rules and also the commitments that we expect from you being academic so I would like to welcome you both in the academic world but I would also like to very much welcome you as alumni of IC Delft that me already mentioned that that you are a family maybe even more than one world also for the Sanitation Graduation School so very welcome here what I think is lacking here is maybe one thing that I think we haven't given something to somebody here in the room that I think also deserves something so I don't have a present there but I think you hold a present and I think it's not a physical present I think it's a symbolic present and I think if you agree with me I would like to call on all the graduates of today to give this present to Damir because I think he deserves this present so I would like to do that maybe by an applause but I think in the content of this applause I would like to call on you to become an ambassador of Sanitation and give that present to Damir so I don't know if you want to join me in an applause but I would appreciate that so I think Damir I think you are an example also for the academic world on how to energize people how to make people motivated both students but also staff I would like to thank you for all the efforts that you already did but also what I expect from you in the coming years because I know that you always have plans so I think that that will be there and I hope that with that it's also a nice start of an evening I would like to invite you all like Anik already said to take a picture outside but also after that to have a drink downstairs in the restaurant so that we can congratulate you personally as well with that I would like to close this meeting and give the floor back to Anik