 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening from where you're joining us. My name is Shakima and I am from the Democratic Republic of Congo. I will be co-moderating this session with my colleague Lyudmila Oduid. We are very delighted to have you join us today for this webinar. In this session where we aim to boost the connection between IOWPs, members in Africa, we will discover the voluntary work opportunities within the IWA network. We will also understand the benefits and the opportunity that comes with active participation within the association. And lastly, we will gain a clear understanding of how engaging within the IWA network can enhance the career objective that everyone has. So please be reminded we have some housekeeping rules. This call will be recorded and made available on demand on the IWA website and also kindly use the chat box for interactive activities and the Q&A to send questions to the panelists. And the question will be answered during the Q&A and the discussion session. So I think without further ado, I'm going to introduce my colleague Lyudmila who will be presenting on IWA YWP. Lyudmila is the steering committee of YWPs. She holds a PhD in water supply and sewage. She is a member of the IWA YWP in charge of event and communication. In general, Lyudmila has around 10 years of experience in the water sector. And since 28, she has internationally, she has international experience actively participating in organizing different events and assisting onsite as part of the IWA sustainability in water sector specialist group. She's involved in working on series of webinar on empowering women and as part of the imaging water leader steering committee. She's also involved in activities that empower young water professionals in the water sector both regionally and internationally. Welcome Lyudmila. Excuse me for some kind of technical issues. Yeah, thank you very much for introduction and I'm also thank you very much for joining us today. From my side, I would like to, I believe there might be some new people who doesn't work like with IWA this day joining us. So let me just give some short overview of IWA and young water professionals community. So, overall, IWA Association is the network of water professionals streaming for a world in which water is wisely sustainably and equitably managed. In these terms, the International Water Association is focused on being international reference for the source of knowledge for sustainable water solution. Support the globally community to their ambitions in relation to water series is being a catalyst for innovation knowledge and best practice for the sector and also to provide extreme and leadership transition to sustainable water solutions. Overall, with an IWA Association, we have different different types of institutions starting from academia and like and up to like industry and other other branches of water sector. And also IWA can be found in different parts of the world from Europe to Asia and America's and other locations. What IWA do so through the organization, the members who participate in this organization, they organize this and support the events they publish articles like in journals and books or specifically or separately journals and book they provide enabling a platform for water professionals. So, on different events or on, for example, like online one like IWA Connect Plus, and also they provide professional development opportunities. And it's up on organization consists of different sectors, for example, like specialist groups, task groups, governing members, young professionals which are which actually this is the sector which we represent and all other sectors. So if to talk specifically about young water professionals. So this is the group of people. It's more likely to say like it's a representative body of the young water professionals to the association overall and to its like strategy. Young water professionals, it's the professionals under like 35 years old, it can be students and also like an early career career professionals. Yes, and to support the development of young water professionals and to ensure sufficient professional capacity of the water sector IWA created kind of like young water professional community. In this slide you can see the representatives myself and Shateng we are their representative and also like a few of our other panelists today, so you'll be able to hear from them as well. And another part of activities for young water professionals is young water professionals chapters. They are located in 40 countries up to now what I know but I believe there might be already some updates. And the young water professional chapters, they are kind of voluntary networks of young water professionals and the national level. They endorse the vision of IWA to develop like a strong network towards the water wise future. And from my side it will be enough to say about young water professional chapters right as today we have like so many representatives specifically from the north and Latin America who will be able to share specifically their experiences and share what can be the opportunities being a member of young water professional sector in the different countries. So, yeah, I think we will continue with the presentation of our speakers, and I'm handing the floor to you Shateng. Thank you so much Lyudmila for giving us a deep insight about IWA and what it does, as well as the involvement of young water professional in the water sector. So I'd just like to remind those who have just joined us that we have some housekeeping rules and the question if you have any question you can just write it in the Q&A box and it will be answered during the Q&A session or the discussion. So I'd like to invite our first speaker who is Ayat, he's Ayat from Canada, Ontario. Ayat Raza currently works as a project engineer with Continental Carbon Group in Ontario, Canada. His works involve providing hair drinking water treatment solution to clients utilizing various physical and chemical water treatment technologies. Ayat obtained his bachelor's and master's in chemical engineering with a research in the area of ozone and supercritical water oxidation. He is currently serving as the regional director on the IWA-AYWP Canada and he is one of the founding members of the IWA-AYWP Canada chapters. Welcome Ayat and kindly share with us your experience on successful strong network in university and YWP events. The floor is yours. Thank you. Good evening, good afternoon and good morning everyone from wherever you are joining today. My name is Ayat Raza. I'm the outgoing regional director for Ontario and I think my term is done here at YWP Canada because we are going to have elections in a few weeks time. Today, the six minutes I have got, I wanted to just talk about how we in four years have become a very influential and strong YWP group contributing both at a domestic which is national level as well as international level. So, next slide please. So, as of right now we are 17 folks. We are focused on different aspects of the day to day function of the YWP group. We have, when we started in 2019, we had 12 executives, but we realized that as we were expanding and we had more members interested in our events, we had to expand. And one of the things we have done from the very start is to make sure that the people who are going to be running the group are going to be made up of people involved in different areas of the water industry. So we have research students who are currently pursuing their PhDs. We have assistant professors who have just started their career. We have industry professionals including myself who work in different aspects of the industry. So it could be consulting. It could be equipment supply. It could be Internet of Things or utilities. And the time we started out in 2019, one of the biggest things we did was we got support from our senior professionals. So in our network, we reached out to people and told them that we are starting this organization and do supporters. So one of the reasons why we have had a drastic increase to what we are doing right now is because of the support we have got both at a university level as well as the industry level. So just to give you an idea of the events we have had, as we started in 2019, within the first six months, we were hit by COVID. So we had to move everything online and majority of our events, still the second term started in August 2021, our events were done only online. So as a matter of fact, we started off with mentoring sessions where a senior professional will come and talk to students about how it is to work in academia or the industry. Then we had workshops and panel discussions. A majority of our panel discussions between 2019 and 2021 were focused around the pandemic and its impact on the water wastewater industry. However, once we have started moving away from the pandemic, we have started focusing on panel discussions on the future of the water wastewater industry climate resilience, as well as what is going to be the urban landscape outlook in the coming years. We also have e-learning sessions where we had internationally recognized personalities in the water wastewater industry come and talk to our young water professionals, whether they are in the industry or academia. One of the biggest achievements we had in the pandemic was our congress, our conference. It was our first conference, which was organized completely online over a period of three days. And we made the necessary establishments to make sure that we are successful. One of the things which was pioneering was we had over 200 participants in this conference, despite it being online. And at the same time, we have also started mentorship programs collaborating with universities. And one of this has been very helpful because a lot of students have been able to get jobs, whether in universities or as postdoctoral or in the industry because of these mentorship programs. Some other events were regional networking events where we just didn't focus on technically empowering YWPs. We also wanted to network with them so that they expand their network and continue the tradition of growing our YWP community in Canada. So our regional networking events are mostly trails or going to hikes or meeting for social events at a coffee shop or something. So that's one of the things we have also focused on is that we have not kept it completely technical. We have tried to keep it social as well so that way we can keep expanding our network. And lastly, apart from all the events mentioned earlier, which were also done from in the second term from 2021 to 2023. Our biggest success in person event was our second YWP conference. We had keynote speakers, we had panel discussions, everything which happens in a conference. But one very important thing to be noted is we had speakers not only from Canada, we had people come over from all over the world. So we had speakers from India, we had speakers from Africa, we had speakers from Europe, and we also had people from Mexico and South America. So one of the biggest success was we were able to, even though it was a national event, we were able to make it international by getting a lot more people involved. We had over 150 plus abstract submitted globally of which we had to select 64 speakers. And lastly, we capped it off by making sure we followed the global IWA Congress events and we actually also had a gala dinner towards the end. So of all the events I have mentioned and all the things we have done, what has been our success like? One of the biggest things is in four years we have had over 3000 plus LinkedIn followers and it is growing by the day. The other thing is we have got recognition locally, domestically, regionally within Canada where people recognize what YWP Canada is and what its purpose serves. And also at an international level, we have had Farouk who is the chair of YWP Canada, be a part of the steering committee as well as the IWA Strategic Council. I myself have been actively involved with international events for YWP globally. The other impact we have had because we started this organization for YWPs, we have had a lot of YWPs actually get jobs or able to better their career by getting into publication or getting into academia or getting into the company they desire to get into. Because of all the events we have kept for them. We have been expanding our network and also this year we have more applicants already for our upcoming term from 2023 to 2025. So, in short, I just wanted to touch overall on what, how we started, what kind of events we have kept and why are unique, our events are kind of unique, which a lot of other YWP chapters have not looked at and what kind of success it has been for us. So, thank you very much for listening and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much for sharing with us the experience of the wider Canadian chapter. And we have to say that it's really insightful and inspiring what you're doing. And without further ado, we'd like to introduce our second speaker who is from the United States of America. Mr. Lassan is a Solid and Resource Recovery Manager at Baltimore City Department of Public Works, USA. His specialization include biosolid treatment and recovery and resource recovery in support of circular economy, emerging contaminant removal and innovation for water and wastewater treatment. After receiving his bachelor in civil engineering, Mamudul received his master's and PhD in civil and environmental engineering from George Washington University. Mamudul believes that in an era of climate change, there is important of including people and water and climate should be interlinked. Mamudul is also passionate about teaching and mentoring students to build their career in water. So Mamudul, welcome and kindly introduce us to the IWA YWP USA chapter. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. This is Mahmood Lassan and I'm actually representing the IWA YWP chapter from USA. And our chapter is pretty new. I would say that it is just like a couple of months. So most of the activities that I will present, those are actually our future objectives and those are already scheduled on our calendar. So one thing I want to share with you guys is in the USA, the young water professional chapters were very strong. But those were under different organizations like Water Environment Federation and American Water Works Association. But we did not have IWA chapter in the USA. So even though we did several IWA activities here, but those are actually local, local means inside the USA. But since we established our new IWA chapter in the USA, so now is our time to expand our IWA activities, not inside the USA, along with inside, we are trying to spreading our activities outside of the USA. And that's why I'm trying to, today I'll discuss how involving with this young water chapter in the USA is different than other IWA chapters in the US. Next slide please. Yeah, so this is our chapter objective. So the main goal is to provide career development to our young water professionals in the USA. Now, we all know that like, you know, we have, as I mentioned that we have different YWP events, but those are mainly US based. But we found that couple of YWPs, they are after they graduated. That's why that, that is our objective, like not only our support be, you know, within the US, but it will be outside of the US so that they can explore and they can expand their career in outside of the US. Also, we have another plan to do some mentorship program. Now with our experienced water professionals, so we already connected couple of our, you know, YWPs with experienced water professionals. We have YWP chapter, and we have also experienced IWP, we call it USENC in the US, so we, our members time to time attended those, you know, meetings and they are trying to get involved with the experienced water professionals and are trying to learn something new, which is very much, you know, useful for their, you know, professional growth. And with that we are also trying to, you know, provide them with some opportunities to work within the YWP is not inside the IWP, but along with like joint collaboration with some other other YWPs under WAF, under AWWA, and also some other affiliated YWPs within the IWP. For example, we have a modeling and integrated assessment group in the IWA. We have water reuse group inside IWA. So we're trying to, you know, give all those opportunities to our YWPs so that they can, you know, get involved with those technical technical committees as well and do some volunteer support to do those committees. Apart from that, so we all know that in IWA they are organizing conferences in every part of the world, saying that we have some other, you know, conferences organized by IWA in the USA. So we found that in the USA when the IWA, you know, conferences are, you know, organized. So we did not have, you know, local volunteers to help those conferences. So our main, another goal is how we can help IWA to organize those conferences inside the USA. And for example, I want to share with the double order conference that will be scheduled next year. And few of our members, YWP members, they are very much involved with organizing that IWA double order conferences. So similar to that, so there might be some other conferences by IWS and we are very much happy to provide support to organize those conferences in the USA. And, you know, in the water sector, so we have several issues and we are trying to, you know, raise awareness among our YWPs to solve those water issues. And is there any high, you know, is there any other innovative technologies in the market we are also trying to, you know, tell our YWPs to be acquainted with those innovative technologies. Next slide please. So now why this YWP chapter is different than other YWPs? First of all, it's knowledge exchange and networking among the peers throughout the world. So in the other YWP chapters, those are only within the USA, but here they get the chance to exchange their knowledge among all the peers in the outside of the US. And also another thing I want to mention that is global priorities versus local priorities. So we have some global problem. So what happened like globally we have some water challenges like in Africa, in South America, in Europe. So we're trying to, you know, address those water issues in our daily meeting and we're trying to discuss those, how we can resolve and how those are actually connected with our problems. And also another thing I want to mention that international collaboration and partnership, international best practice, exposure to international best practice and how our YWPs are engaged with any other IWP events in the USA. So those are also our objectives and those are different than other YWP chapters. Next slide please. And yeah, a couple of advantages the YWP that they can get is the international network, interdisciplinary approach, exposure to international best practices, opportunities for international events and exchange programs and definitely global recognition and collaboration. So they will get the chance to collaborate with other YWPs across the globe that will be also helpful for their careers. Next slide please. So as I mentioned that we are very much new and this is our committees and we are very much active and hopefully in this next calendar so already it has been started so in the next couple of months we will see a couple of more activities under YWP USA chapter. Thank you. Thank you very much Mamudul. And it's really good to notice that even if the chapter is new, at least you are helping provide help for career development and growth and other advantage that you mentioned during your presentation. So for those who have just joined us kindly write your question down to the Q&A box and after this third speaker we will be able to receive our first panel of questions. So I'd like to invite our third speaker who is Rene Cardena de Villa from Mestico. Rene is a chemical engineer from the University of Veracruzana. He has a master's degree in environmental engineering from UNAM where he works on hydrogen production through photo fermentation from volatile fatty acid. In 2018 he earned the PhD in environmental engineering from the Institute of Engineering UNAM where he evaluated hydrogen production in bio-electrochemical system. He conducted a research to stay in the laboratory of environmental biotechnology at ENRA at Narbonne France. Rene, you have the floor. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. I'm Rene Cardena and I'm VC chair of the John Water professional chapter of Mexico. Next slide please. Okay, I start with the committee member distribution. This is interesting because most of our members are focused in this location and it's interesting because Mexico is a great country and not have a lot of members in all territory. The next, for the reason I start with a challenge for the chapter, it's necessary to increase the territorial reach of John Water. And for this reason we propose create a John Water network within state universities because in general, don't have the contact with the public space in the schools. And create, we believe it's important to have members in the public universities. Well, other thing is inform the public and private sector of the existence of the John Water because in general, best sectors don't know the existence of the chapter and we don't participate in the decision or in the activities for these sectors. Well, involved the YWP in issues and activities related to water management. This is related with the other point with the networks with the public and private sectors at the next. Well, now our main action are the webinars is the best activity for our chapter because our main audience is a John people, undergraduate people, and the participation is high in general. And we communicate different things, different problematics of Mexico or Latin America, problematics. And well, this is the principal tool for our chapter, the webinars. And well, we do collaboration with other chapters in Latin America and participate in different events of other chapter or other regional activities. Well, now, or opportunities, we believe the main tools are the social media. And especially in Mexico is the Facebook, because we observe this is the principal social media to connect with John people. And but now we need to exploit social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, because LinkedIn is the other opportunity for our chapter because we believe with LinkedIn create connection with the public sector and the industry sector. And for this, we need to generate dynamic social media material, because don't have an, and a solid, I don't know, a solid, chapter, we need to create more material with original ideas and original material. And well, we, we work in this point specifically now. And well, it's all. And thank you so much for the invitation. Thank you so much for your representation is I think that should be some technical issues on this. Can you go over to the next slide. Sure, it seems like it's me who was in technical issues. I'm hoping, hoping you guys have seen the final present present words of Rene and I wanted to say like, you know, it's very inspiring to see like motivated young water professionals who, who is trying to increase you know the engagement overall and also to, to, to, to help other young water professionals to develop their skills. Overall, let me check the chat box because we are heading to the question and answers. If we have any from from the audience at this moment. So we haven't received it yet any any questions but I would like to invite all the participants if they have it so they can share it via the chat so we can collect it. And other options that if you're free you can open your mic and state your question on that. That will be great if we have some something but while we're waiting I would like to ask Hayat. For example, you were mentioning about that you get the support from the senior professionals can you please tell us a few examples what was the support. So just to give an example. Siva, Sarti who was one of the IWA members at that time when we started the organization, he was the one who was pushing the idea of YWP Canada. And so he was an industry professional. We, we have a lot of people in our executive committee who were students and their professors actually encouraged the idea of YWP Canada as well. So, from the very start they were ready to share their knowledge their resources, their network with us about the goal of YWP Canada. And that was what was really helpful for us from the very start that we had a strong foundation where we had the backing of senior professionals. So, in any organization, yes, you can start a water chapter, but it's very important that for it to be more successful and have a better outreach and more people are interested in being a contributing to its events and activities. It's important that you, the senior professionals also are on the same page as as the YWP and believe in the vision. So, I think Farouk is on the call as well and she can add a little more because she is the chair. I work under her so she may have more input on this. Farouk you want to add something. Thank you so much and thanks everyone. Yeah. I just can add the role of the governing members. In Canada, we have really, really supported governing members, and they have been a really great asset for us. Since we started the chapter afterwards they have been sponsoring us, supporting us with our finances because we didn't have to handle our finances, and they are super helpful, helping us to manage our finances to their organization. That was one thing when we started and also sending us examples of how they run in Canada. So we have a role model because it's hard. It's a big country to navigate and we were starting small. And it also suggests to everyone to talk to their governing members, get closer to them and, and yeah, be a team and work together. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much Farouk for adding this, you know, comment. And also we have the question from Talha Refai. I don't know to which chapter it may be relevant, but many, maybe some of you can think about that. So she asked, did any of the chapter think of ways to include UN water conference outputs in their planned activities or events? Is there any volunteers to respond? Maybe United States wants to include. How about you, Mahmood? That's a great question. And we know that a couple of weeks ago we had a United Nations water conference after so many years and there are a couple of good, very good regulations. And since we're in the US and we are pretty new. So we had that opportunity to include in our chapter like in our next objective. And what we think like that, our main goal, how we connect our objectives with the United Nations, you know, one thing is like resource recovery and other decarbonizations. And we tried, initially we tried to look at some there, how we can correlate with their SDG goals with ours, but those are mainly based on sanitation and in the US, most of our, you know, treatment facilities are mainly offsite with the sewer line. So that's why we, even though our plan was to do for some SDG6 and then realize that no, probably US is not the best country because we have a limited scope here because there are other countries, they have several challenges on sanitation. So our goal is how we can go for decarbonizations like until 2030 and 2035, how we can decarbonized our, you know, our treatment facilities. And that's why our next webinar that we're planning to, you know, organize under YWP that is actually decarbonizations in the water facilities. And we're planning to invite the experienced professionals to talk and to, you know, to chime our YWP so that they can learn and they can also do, you know, include that in the daily jobs. And not only that, I also want to highlight one more thing that is actually like how to say that like we saw that our problem sometimes is very localized. For example, we have some nutrient problem in the US. So we're trying to solve how we can optimize our treatment facilities through innovations and some or any other technologies, but other countries, they don't have that specific thing, but those are similar. For example, like some countries, they have land issues. We don't have land issues, but they have some other challenges. So how we can connect, so even when they, you know, promulgate the resolutions, those are actually for all countries. So, so how we can get some specific, you know, objectives that are actually challenging for other countries, but how we can get those into our chapter just to just to just to make sure that probably if we have some expertise from the experienced young, experienced professionals, how we can connect those experienced professionals to other countries, something like that. So that is our goal, like and still now we're trying to try to, you know, include some other experts like especially the SDG6 incentives, like how we can incorporate those ideas in our chapter, but right now we are only thinking about decarbonizations and nutrient removal. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for such comprehensive response. I think we can respond one more question and then we will move to the another session. So, Andrea was asking, Andrea Zapata was asking, like, there are activities where companies from industrial sector can be invited to present their experience challenges in the water treatment in any of the webinars that the chapters do. So I'm wondering maybe, René, haven't speak yet, maybe he can talk about, is it possible in Mexico like this? Yes. In fact, I will write to Andrea to invite to share the experience in Mexico because this is interesting, but the activities in our chapter and yes, of course. All right. Thank you very much. I think we will keep other questions for for a bit later. And yeah, I mean, maybe even during the other session, the speakers can try to respond them, but we will be moving to next speakers. And our next speaker will be the representative of Young Water Professional chapter in Argentina. It's Augustine Landaburu. He's also my colleague within the steering committee Young Water Professionals in the IWA. So he's a civil engineer and has a master's degree in water management from University of Buenos Aires, where he's currently assistant professor. He has experience in water and sanitation consultancy and wastewater treatment audit. As I mentioned, he is a part of Young Water Professionals, and specifically he is the president of Argentina chapters. So, René, the floor is yours, please. Oh, I'm sorry, not René. Augustine, excuse me. Hi, all. Okay, I will tell you about the events that we organized this year with Young Water Professional Argentina. First, I am going to start with in-person activity. We have done our first in-person activities in the last year in 2022. We haven't done in-person activities or was online. And so it was a challenge and it was very nice. We did this activity with UTN, that is a National Technological University. And it was during the World Watcher Day. In the picture you can see that was I, like Young Water Professional, was the president of the governing member. I is Argentina and the vice president of IWA, Danielo Alaska, who is at the right side. And then after this event, we took the picture that you can see on the right. And we have a dinner, a social dinner. So it was a very nice event, a very good experience to reply. So next slide, please. Now I am going to tell you about webinars. We did a webinar about constructed wetlands. In Argentina, we don't have guidelines or regulations about how to design or construct a wetlands. So we thought that it is very important to introduce these topics and push it on the agenda. And we have an specialist of wetlands constructions of constructed wetlands in our committee. So it was very fruitful for us to do these events. In the second picture you can see a regional webinar. In Argentina, we did with two organizations more principally. IDISCO Interamericana, that is another association like IWBI, but only in America. The Younger Coalition of Water. This event has the purpose to get more information about the UN Water Conference. So it was very fruitful too, because all the young people that was to travel to the UN conference have this space and this event to change and share the experience and what they expect about it. After the conference, IWBI with his fellows in America, with our support, organized another event about the conclusion of this UN water conference. So it was very nice. We could connect with another young professionals and it was good. In the third and fourth player, you can see webinars did with Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and Spain. It was a very good event. The topics were about women in the water sector and about efficiency in water networks. It was a good, we share experience. We have our webinars in Spanish. It is very important for us to have knowledge in Spain. The next slide, yes, our challenge. We think that we need more social events. We have some, we have this event that I mentioned. We have meeting of the steering committee presidencials, but we have to improve it to gain more engagement. Also, we need more connection with universities. We see that this is a very important partnership. And yes, the high potential in regional networks because we saw that these last events were very important to improve our knowledge at regional levels. And I think that we are very good. So this is all for me. Thank you very much for the invitation and I am waiting for it for your questions. Thank you, Augustine. I totally can agree with you that beside technical aspect networking is also very important. So, yeah, thank you for stressing like on this point in this type of aspect of our professional life. And let me introduce our next speaker. It's also my colleague from Young Water Professional Steering Committee. It's Claudia Prang. And she's a civil engineer specializing in hydrology and water resources management. She's a water and sanitation consultant lecturer member of, as I already mentioned, Steering Committee of IWA and vice chair of Young Water Professional Ecuador with a passion for science development and climate change adaptation. And she's dedicated to implying you young voices and facilitating knowledge transfer so Claudia, it's my pleasure to pass the floor to you. Thank you for the introduction. And thank you everyone for joining. I want to give a short introduction of our kind of our history as YWP Ecuador, if you could help me with the next slide. So, our origin story, it began in 2021. I want to give this short introduction just so everyone has an idea of how the process of becoming a YWP chapter actually works. It started on my part with an email, I attended an event much like this one, and I reached out to the IWA liaison person with youth at that time it was Laura. And I said, I'm interested in doing a YWP Ecuador chapter if there's interest from anyone else. Sure, let me see if I can get more people involved and then a couple of months passed and we had, I think four or five women interested on working together to do this and create this chapter. So in 2022, we did all the paperwork in 2021, but in 2022, we had our launch event on March 24, and it was a pretty big success. We had a lot of people connected, we collaborated with other YWP chapters that helped us with the introduction. And it was very, it worked with us a lot there. And we did a quick survey to try to understand what would be our role in Ecuador for young water professions, what the young water profession is needed, if it's capacity building, if it's networking, and if it's capacity building which type of capacity building they would be interested in. In 2023 now we are still think of us as a young chapter, but we've already been going for a little over a year, and we've been working mainly with events as well. I don't know if you've ever mentioned any more the women with the ever American network that we were part of as well because already was mentioned by Argentina and Mexico, but we did also some courses online courses, we did an event that was very useful for us with Canada, where we met a person that was part of YWP Canada that was Ecuadorian and was studying in Canada and she, it was the first time she was hearing about us. So, that sort of events are always very useful to try and reach out to as many people as possible. Could we do the next slide please. So, here you can see a little bit more of what we are working on currently. As all of us, we are working on our communication channels, social media, we also develop our, we're in the process of developing our website, our emails, and we work with capacity building and international cooperation as well. Here are more concrete things that we are working on. There's a national event in 2023 that we've, we're trying to figure out how to actually pull it off. And we are having some informal meetings, sessions, workshops, open courses, I've just finished one, I think it was last week that we did distribution networks and pressurized pipes design, it was just an introduction. But it was really fun to connect with the different people that were trying to get to know our chapter a little better. And this last part is something we're working on as well, publication of experiences of our members, projects and initiatives. So we want to open our social media and our channels to amplify the voices of the Ecuadorian YWPs. And when I say Ecuador and YWPs, I don't mean they have the Ecuadorian nationality, but they are involved in Ecuador. One of our committee members is actually based in Belgium and she is from Belgium, but she did her PhD in Ecuador so that's why she's been working with us all this time. Next slide please. I know if there's initially procrastination until the slides work again. But the objective of this short talk is not just tell you what we've done and what we're planning to do but also give some lessons learned in this first year of actually working as YWP Ecuador. So, one of the lessons learned that was positive that we did is kind of like a buddy system. So we had the, the steering committee that started the YWP that did all the paperwork and we started with a very small group of people. We were worried that if we opened up the floor to anyone that wanted to be part of the YWP Ecuador and said, yeah, I'm interested if we said, okay, you're part of the team and bring them into the WhatsApp groups or whatever that the motivation and the work would get diluted, because sometimes it's very easy to say, yeah, I'm interested in water, I'm interested in the YWP professionals, but it's a little harder to actually put in the time and effort that is needed to make these sort of initiatives work. And as we are in a volunteer basis, we really need people that are motivated to work. So we come up with this weather system. So each of us brought one person, kind of like a mentee, and they started working and now they have their own projects, and they have their own initiatives, so it worked very well. As I said, curiosity, easy engagement is a little harder. It's easy to get a bunch of people saying, yeah, we're very interested, but the actual engagement is a little harder. And I think something that the other chapters have already mentioned is really true. We don't only need to have social media, but we need to create some sort of value for the people to follow and to engage. Because if we're just posting, I don't know, happy water day, it's not that it's not useful, but it likes that value added, so you actually start engaging and actually start promoting these objectives that we have, right? So that's another lesson learned. We're volunteers, life gets in the way, so the key here is adaptability. It's very easy to come to rely on one person to do all. And if you are the person that has a little more free time at the moment, then it's easy to start taking a lot of responsibilities, but then life gets in the way. So what we would advise is to try and share the responsibility and always working in teams and groups. So activities don't just die out because the person responsible just got a little busy. And I don't know if anyone has any questions, but that would be what I wanted to share with you all. And I don't know if you're going to share the slides, but in any case if anyone is interested to get to know a little more of our experience and our lessons learned, feel free to contact me or at the YWP Ecuador in general, and we would be happy to share. Also, just mentioning that welcome to the YWP United States and action based in Washington DC. So I look forward to collaborating with you as well. And that's it for me. Thank you, Claudia for your presentation on this. Luigi Mila, I finished her. I think Mila has network issues. Okay. Yes. I think we're going to introduce our last speaker. And he's Eduardo from Bolivia. So Eduardo is a civil engineer specializing in hydrology, currently pursuing a master's degree in climate and environment in an environment in Brazil. He is the vice chair of the IWA YWP Bolivia and has previously worked as hydro meteorologist for the Ministry of Water as a specialist in water planning information system for the German cooperation. And as part of the IWA Bolivia, Eduardo is committed to strengthening the voice of young people and promoting the transfer of knowledge. So Eduardo, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Thank you very much people. Eduardo and while we're waiting for the last. I'm very glad to do all the, all the presentations. And I'm going to tell, tell you something about us. I'm going to tell you a brief story about our beginnings. We are from our site and our future goals. And if, if you guys want, I can share my, my screen. Yes, Eduardo, I think that is best. I think that Ludmila is facing some issues with her. Let me just make you a co-host so you can share from your side. Okay. Okay. Okay. As soon as you tell me I can begin with Mila. Yeah, I think, I think you can start. Okay, thank you very much. So don't worry. We all have technical issues of the time. So I'm Eduardo, I'm going to tell you a brief story about our beginnings, our challenges, our goals. Next slide please. EWA members, EWA, and eventually our professional members in my country. We've been as a group, very interested, a post-graduate students that form a group later on, very interested in to know more about water security. Next slide please. And the EWA Bolivia chapter was officially approved in 2021. Next slide please. And ever since, they've been launching many events online like this, we, these webinars celebrating Water Week. Next slide please. And even in person events, celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls. Many of these groups have been in the EWA members, EWA senior members and a group of young water professional, very eager to help others to understand not only water security, but also the importance of water in our everyday. Next slide please. What happened, the previous one please, yes. And we thought that originally young people eager to seek changes in how we manage water resources and after one and a half year. These experiences, these past experiences help us as a group to take the step into creating or into applying to the creation of the EWA Young Water Professional Chapter. We deliver the record documents, we organize our peace committee, we work on a proposal, and during through all this process, we will lead, we will guide by the Bolivius EWA governing members. Next slide please. But unfortunately, there were some problems as usual. Some of our young water professionals left the foundation group in different stages of this process. And in addition, with the people that remained, we had some troubles to establish our network of young water professionals. This was kind of a bump for us because we had great expectations when planning events. The EWA governing members, but even though I told you that there were young professionals that were very eager to share their knowledge and they were already involved in past activities. But we noticed that as a group, we needed more planning and organizational skills. Next slide please. But now, well, our application was approved in March of this year. And despite our committee has changed, our peace committee, we want to get things done and then get things started and accomplish many things. Next slide please. And some of our goals are we want to build our own network, because we know that in our region in my country, there are many young researchers, scientists, field workers, but very eager to share all the knowledge, but they don't have the appropriate ways to do that. And we want to launch events and publish some of their work, share the importance of implications, the applications, etc. And we also want to actively contribute to the Bolivia EWA's chapter. And finally, we want to contribute with our vision and protective on regional issues related to water. Next slide please. This is a short story from us. This is our beginning story, but we believe this is the way. Next slide please. Thank you very much. I'm Eduardo and I have to happy to answer any, any question. Thank you so much Eduardo for sharing your, your experiment and view with us. And I think most of us, we actually relate on the issue that we had, you had sorry when you started, when you guys started implementing the chapter. Like when we mean skills, most of us we have a lot of members who are not active. And sometimes it's actually required to have skills to try to boost the community, the YWP community and activities that we undertake on ground. So we've this presentation we're going to end our second, our second part of the presentation, and we will go to the Q&A. I know that we are rushing with the time, but I think we'll have time for if we have any also from the audience, it will be the opportunity also to write them down so that our panelists can also. I think my first question for this will go to Aguistin. I remember you mentioned about the webinar chapter, the webinars the chapter has organized. I wanted to know what those webinars are technically based, if yes, were they technically based on what. Hi. Okay. Yes, the most of the webinars are technical, but said, in particular the constructed well done, we see the need to introduce the topic and to put in agenda so it was specifically about constructed well done, but not very, very technical because it was not our idea. And that's the rest of the events, yes, we are technical, technical muscle. For example, the events that we may presential. It was very technical with seniors and we have international dialogue so it was very interesting about the future challenge of water. I think that it's answer the questions. Yes, you have you have and it's actually very important to note that during those technical, the technical webinars that you have, you also involved. Yes, which is good and it's trial ready to start the question that everyone raise about rational talks. So I think my question to Claudia. I saw someone she said that engaging recent graduate is invaluable. So I wanted her to explain to us or to me also because I didn't get it well. What was that meaning. Thank you for the question that was one of the points that I kind of rushed through. But what we mean with these is that people that are just finishing their education they're undergraduate degree are very, very valuable for us in the water. And they have a slightly different vision from us a little older young water professionals, they also have different resources, different networks, they have more access to, for instance, the university network, and to create these So for us, it has been very, very important to not only talk to young professionals that have already left their university and have been working for a couple of years, but to actually engage these other recent graduates or people that are on the years of their undergraduate, because also they tend to have a little more time to do the light work that is needed for the events and that sort of things. For us, our, our social media wizard is actually a recent grad and he is, he's been invaluable for our, for our work. That made us be also, I think believe more on what they say that everyone has a stone that can bring when we are building the building so I think that's really good. I also had another question for you. It was about the collaboration with other chapter is key, you did quote that. So I wanted to know do you have any collab activity coming up soon. Yes, we vote chapter. Sure, we actually, we identify our collaborations in these sort of events. So hopefully we will, we will find further collaborations here right now we're working mainly with the American network that were formed, because we identify this need from Latin America to have content in English for Portuguese here in Brazil, but that that translation is still missing so we're kind of focusing more on Latin America, but we would open our doors if anyone wants to collaborate on any of the other chapters as well. Thank you so much Claudia for that. And also one question for Augustine hoping that the time is still on our side. Sorry for, yeah for Eduardo, I'm sorry. And I wanted to know. So far, since you started, could you tell us what has been the biggest accomplishment of the YWP Bolivian chapter. Well, this is a big question, you know, we are kind of new here. We, we've been taking baby steps in order to create our chapter so we'll say that our, our main achievement so far is before approval of our application. We want, well, we're in the process of getting to know the real person that are going to work with us. And this for me. And I think I'm going to tell this, this story of these women are two of my colleagues if they are not here in the audience. And getting to know all you all feel all of the original chapters is a big achievement for us because we know, know that, for example, Augustine, Claudia. I don't remember the name of the, they are calling from Mexico, sorry, but they are already working on big issues and big, big things. We want to go to there. We want to get there. And we want to improve our own, our own, I don't know, say our own necessities, you know, get a mixture of our own necessities with the example of all the regional chapters and trying to do the best. We are now the new guys here. I don't know if we're really new guys, but we want to improve over time and we want to get things done. That's the main issue. Thank you so much Eduardo and I also believe that creating the chapter is one of the biggest step. We all know how the process is and we know that it requires a lot of work and it's really good that now we also have a Bolivian chapter that is going to work forward and we're looking, we look on seeing you, we look forward, sorry, in seeing you and the activities that you'll be doing. So I think we still have like, okay, in the next five minutes, I know we will not be able to, sorry, to, to have the breakout session as we planned, but I think we're going to invite the panelists from the first panel. We would like to, I'm going to ask two questions and whatever feels comfortable with any panelists and any speaker, you can answer. So the first question will be, what, what do you find the most important and most beneficial personally for you to be part of YWP chapter. And the second question will be, what will be your main advice for the water youth in the country of America and Latin America, who will decide or who are interested to establishing a YWP chapter. So I think we're going to start with our panelists from Canada if he's still there. Yeah. Okay, so the first question I think you learn leadership right that's the biggest thing you learn how to. I think one of the things engineering schools have not done very good is teaching us how to communicate. And at the same time, network, and I think by being a part of a YWP group in the past four years I have seen my network expand, but also not speaking about myself. When we took initiatives, we have seen the people who have been volunteering for us they have seen their network expand they have taken on more leadership roles. In fact, some of our volunteers are now planning to be a part of the executive team for the next coming term. So leadership is a very big word, it covers a lot of different aspects but I would say that by being a part of the YWP chapter, you are slowly developing yourself to being a leader. So I would say that is that is one of the biggest advantages. So the second question I think it was direct. I'm not the best person to answer that. I would like to answer that question. Can you repeat the question please. The second question what what's will be your main advance advice story for the young water professionals or the water youth in your country, who we were interested in establishing a YWP chapter. Okay, so I first I want to mention that first grow some network. For example, like if someone or any country wants wants to, you know, start the chapter, the main challenge is the membership, I would say. So like, like, you know that it's a new chapter but you will not find the members when if you don't have enough member you cannot, you know, start any events, or that will challenging like let's say if you if you want to organize any any event, you need members and you need some volunteer I would say that before starting a chapter, try to, you know, expand the network among the YWPs and make a group, like say internal group and discuss among yourselves like how you can collaborate and how we can start the chapter and when you when you are when you think that you are ready to start in terms of you have enough, you know, members, let's say 1520 is 25 some dedicated members because because it's not like starting a chapter because when you start a chapter, the more responsible tool come you have to continue right. So you need some dedicated person who will give some time who who has some motivation so try to get as much similar member as you can and when you are think when you think that okay you have enough members and you have some motivation and motivated people and then then go for starting the chapter. Thank you so much for that valuable contribution. I think I will give Renee kindly is it possible to keep it under one minute because we're running out of time. Yes, for the first question, I think that the most benefits to to the chapter is the networks, because when you have some problem, or you can communicate with other members of the chapter and maybe this person resolve your problem or your, I don't know. When you. You need to obtain a job. I don't know the networks is that is the most to me that the main benefit. The second I think it's important to start step by step with a little activities, but little but solid. For example, I don't know some, some activity online on some some pleasure for the social media and you do this as this material. Hello to to to to involve other other person and increase the participation of the in this case of the young people. Thank you so much Renee. I think Claudia can go on. You just need to answer one thing is not enough ever. Sure. We're very interesting questions, but I think my main advice would be to be organized from the beginning, maybe we can borrow a page from software development and try to apply a giant methodologies for organization have something that centralized so everybody can have eyes on the documents and things on. We use Mila notes in Ecuador but you can use notion or whatever software, but I think that's essential so you don't lose track of what you're doing and you don't multiply efforts and end up to people doing the same thing. So I think that's very useful. Thank you so much, Claudia. And then we still have to Agastin. Hi. Yes, I am very proud to participate in this network. It gave more access to global and regional information. My advice for young water professionals is to is to take advantage of this opportunity, share knowledge, experience and energies, because if you have a knowledge, it will be more valuable if you share it and it will increase your leadership and improve your skill. I think that it is the most important thing that I have to say. And I'll finally conclude this session by asking Eduardo to take no more than one minute, if possible, so that we can conclude in time. Okay, thank you very much. Well, I agree with everyone else, the networking is the most beneficial thing from this endeavor. And my main advice for new people that wanted to create a chapter is to highlight the fact that this is a volunteer thing. And we do this as a thing because we love to share things, we love to organize things, we love to get things done, we love to share knowledge, I don't know. And as Claudia put it in her slide, life gets in the way, so we have to get to take this into account and make room for improvement, share our knowledge, share our documents, our technical skills, I don't know. So this would be my answer. Thank you so much, Eduardo. So we still have two minutes left. And I don't know if you would realize there. Is she there? Yes, I'm here. I just want to say, like, I'm really thankful for guys to, you know, to get together and to share their experience with all other participants, because I believe like all of the things that I've always said or like advisors or like shared their experience, it will have like for sure like echo was in in their mind and it may inspire them also to search for some opportunities or also to create some opportunities for someone. So I believe that is really amazing. Thank you so much, Lyudmila. So I'll conclude by saying thank you to all the participants, the speaker and the organizer of this get together session. I hope that all of the participants and even speaker learned something from what has been shared. And we will have something also that will take to our own, our own chapter to implement so that all of us can actually be very active and help with SDG6. So I hope it's not our last interaction. I hope we're going to keep in touch online and I hope to see you in the next event. Thank you so much.