 So, hi everyone, thank you for coming for our global coordination call. This is the last one in 2022. And today we're going to be discussing about challenges and how the chapters will be able to to solve them, improving their engagement and their membership activities. I am Isabella Spindola and the focal point for young water professionals within IWA. So, yes, I'm the one responsible for sending all the notifications and your pertinences via your emails. And if you have any kind of questions regarding the YWP community, or even how to become a member and get engaged with IWA, please feel free to reach out to me. I will be more than happy to help you with all of this information. So, just a quick overview about the chapters and this amazing community that we have all over the world. We have more than 35 chapters in this community keeps growing. So, if you know someone that is not part of a chapter and wants to comment, please do send me an email. And I can help you form in the chapter or also establishing connection for you to join one of the chapters that we are already have, as you can see here in the map. And we really do try to engage in water professionals and the counter chapters with all the other communities that we have with IWA. So, if you are part of IWA, and if you want to get connected and to meet other other members, you can join the specialist groups, you can join the chiefs with a governing member. If you have more than five years as an active IWA members, you can apply to be a fellow and later. Just English fellow, this is the highest recognition that you can have and you can achieve with IWA. You can also join the international water regulators. Some of our programs that we have the water wise cities, the basin connected cities, the climate smile utilities. You can participate in our events in person and online and join the publications with the IWA publishing team. And you can check all this information in our website. And for those that joined our last congress in Copenhagen, it was a success and I'm sharing some of the photos from the plenary from the presentations that we had from the emerging water leaders forum. We had amazing discussions that you took the lead during the World Water Congress. So, for those who were there, congratulations for your engagement in Copenhagen. I won't be the only one speaking and moderating the event today, so no more, we won't be hearing just my voice today. I will be joined by Chen Li and Shotaro Gouto. They are the members of the YWP steering committees, and they're also the ones responsible for the chapter's coordination. So, they are really keen to get to know the chapter, to meet the chairs, and in contact with them if you are part of a chapter, especially for the chair or the vice chair. And you should get to know them, they are here today, so just drop them a message in the chat. And they will kindly help you with your questions and a specific that you want to know about the chapters. Before we jump into the presentations, just some quick aspects in terms of how to use them. I know that the most of you are already familiar with the platform, but quickly on this. If you have any questions, you can post in the chat, feel free to introduce yourself. So, say hi, my name is, in my case Isabella, I'm from Brazil, and I work with the IWP secretary yet. So, connect via the chat and try to engage as much as possible with the presentation that we have today, but also with the participants that we have here. Feel free to unmute yourself during the discussion, so we want to know your questions. And we want you to participate. But during the presentations, only the speakers are allowed to open their audio. And you don't need to be concerned with sharing the screen, I will be the one doing this during the event today, okay. So, shout out and tune. Now is your time. I will hand over to both of you. Okay, thank you very much for the Isabella. So, Chen, can you moderate the presentation from each chapter? Sure. So, I think before that, we should do a brief introduction of our self to let the participants know us. So, I want to say hello, everyone, welcome to our IWP professional school board coordination call. I'm Chen Li, come from academia working on the bell gas recovery from wastewater and waste. I'm part of IWP professional steering committee and responsible for chapter coordination with my partners of TALO. I'm also newly elected vice chair of IWP China chapter. So, I'm happy to be here and to be a volunteer for this event. Thank you very much. So, Shotel, do you want to give a brief introduction before our presentation? Okay, again, thank you very much for participating in this event. And I'm Shotel from Japan, but currently I'm not living in Japan. I'm living in the West Africa, especially I'm currently living in the Gambia, but now I'm living in the Senegal Dakar. And I'm working at the UN as a watch specialist now. Thank you very much again. So, Chen, can you do the next section? So, I will introduce the speakers, Claudia from Ecuador chapter and Beatrice from Italy chapter, Matthew from UK chapter and from South Africa chapter and Anik from Pakistan. So, Isabella, please turn to the next page. Okay, this is our agenda. Yeah, you have received the email also. The first session is welcome and meeting objective. And the second session is the plantation of IWP country chapter. And the first chapter is Ecuador and the second one is Pakistan, then UK and South Africa and Italy. And then we will have the open discussion with all IWP chapters, chapter committee members so you can have some questions to our speakers, then closing remarks and updates from IWP and IWP zero committee. Okay, so the next is plantation. So, thank you very much for your coming and we are looking forward to you to share to your share on the challenges and solutions for IWA Young Water Professionals chapter membership engagement. So let's welcome our first speaker, Claudia Brand from Ecuador. Okay, it's our time, Claudia. Thank you very much for the presentation. Hi everybody, it's very nice to be here meeting all of you. As Gina already said, I'm with the Ecuadorian chapter. We are relatively new chapter, we started a data work kickoff event the earlier this year. And we have several lessons learned, but a lot of things to learn from you guys as well. I'm the events and communication communication officer in the Ecuadorian chapter, and also part of the global student committee. But in the Ecuadorian chapter, we're still very small chapter so we don't really have fixed roles is more of everybody works on anything that's needed to be done. So, that's how we've been working for now. And just to organize a little bit this short presentation. As I mentioned, we started the paperwork to form the Ecuadorian chapter, it's last year, and we started the actual chapter earlier this year we had our kickoff event on February, where we did the presentation and we said, hey, everyone, we are in chapter we're starting this out. And we had the first contact with the IWA Ecuador chapter as well. That's also a relatively new chapter in IWA. So, we're still trying to understand how to collaborate there. The first order of business was getting a little bit more organized coming up with the work plan, trying to identify a vision for our chapter as well, and setting up some goals, both for this year and a little more long term in the first couple of years of existence. And now that we've already set our, once we're starting to see that one of our main, not problems but hiccups is with the establishing a pipeline for new members engagement. Because once we did our kickoff event, we had a lot of interest from a lot of different people saying, this is so interesting, we want to be a part of this. And we were really sure how to capitalize on that interest and turned it into engagement, because probably you all have similar experiences. So, let's just open up the chapter and say, okay, everybody's now part of the Ecuadorian chapter, then work kind of gets diluted. And if you're on a group that you have like 50 people. No one really takes accountability for the things that need to be done. So that's what I mean when it gets a little diluted because it just receive messages and so somebody else is going to see that and somebody is going to take care of that. And that's one of the things we were really worried about. So we went the other route and trying to keep everything on our founders committee. And then again, we had a lot of interest and that part was the hardest for us to try to convert that into actual engagement. What we've been doing now that I think it's working really well that could be an advice for new chapters is the founder members it wasn't intentional but we are all women, we all the ones that started the chapter where five women that work in Ecuador, and each of us is bringing someone as kind of like our protege. We have more people and more hands to work, but the responsibility is still ours. So that kind of help getting more hands, but not diluting the responsibility chain. So, I think that's been working well, because, as you all know, since this is volunteer volunteer positions and work gets crazy all the time so sometimes your disponibility to to give your time to event and to do this sort of work is not ideal, but having this kind of protege or someone that can step up when you are kind of busy on and cannot do meetings or things like that, that has worked very well. Also we have a particularity that even though we are the Ecuadorian chapter. I'm currently working in Washington DC, even though I'm Ecuadorian and Brazilian as well. We have another one that's finishing up her PhD and she is in Belgium currently. And one of our founders as well is from Belgium but is doing her PhD in Ecuador. So she's traveling around a lot so we had a lot of different time zones to account for during our our meetings so that also kind of complicated things. Another one of our founder members is working as manager in drinking water treatment plant so she has really weird times to for her meetings and that sort of things. So that was one of our challenges that kind of helped with this bringing somebody else as a protege. Then what we've wanted to do and what we are working this year was the kickoff event that we already did and it was really interesting because we asked for the help of both Isabella, and also other chapters so they went and gave their experience so that kind of gives us a little bit more of an idea of what we could do as a YWP chapter, not only us but all the people that were interested on joining the Ecuadorian chapter. So we finish up our work plan and one of the things that we are currently working very hard to try to finish this year is series of courses, or kind of workshops, because we in Ecuador we used to have a very strong scholarship program with the government, and people that got the scholarship needed to transfer knowledge back as a form of payment, and coincidentally I'm one of these scholars that already finished their studies and I need also to do this compensation that we call. And I saw there an interesting opportunity because the scholars needed to give courses free of charge to do this knowledge transfer, and we as YWP Ecuador wanted to do some sort of events of engagement to give value to the people that wanted to join. So currently we are talking to these different scholarship recipients that will be doing some very technical courses because we need to do like 20 hours, so it's like a heavy course. To be able to comply with all the regulations and everybody be happy we're trying to partner with different universities in Ecuador so we have their seal of approval. The scholar can get the okay you transfer knowledge and people also can have a better idea of these the importance of this knowledge being transferred right now I think it's a natural building environment. We are also thinking of something with water for agriculture and a more basic hydraulics class kind of for people in the water sector but are not really engineers or hydraulic engineers so kind of like an introduction to hydraulic engineering. And the other thing is establishing corporations, both within Ecuador and with the YWP chapters worldwide. We, the Canada chapter contacted us recently to see we can have in January meeting to kind of do some networking exchange experiences. And we're very grateful for that because it's always good to have a chapter with more experience to kind of lead you through the, through the process. So, I think those are the main things we've been working on. Another thing we tried, but we are still not excellent is with social media and Twitter and LinkedIn, we already created the social media but we need to come up with some sort of like publishing schedule to be more consistent and to to generate more engagement. We created emails, but like a domain, mainly for the email part, but we also plan next year to do at least a lot of things that didn't pay Ecuador.org can see the where to write or where to participate but that's our project for next year as well. And I think that's pretty much my time. The other side is the same thing, but like prettier. So this is what we've been doing. Of course we did the first survey of all the interesting interested people that wanted to join, and also to know these training and courses that we are trying to come up with. You know what people needed in order to supply that demand so we don't end up with a course that nobody really needs. And that was one of our first steps, the international cooperation and also national cooperation, and then the next slide. So this is our goals for the next few years, we do plan a national event in 2023. Our, our strategies to, to latch on to another event that's already happening. And try to, I don't know, just diversify the need for like the logistics and all of that that it's a little more complicated when you're a small group. So, maybe being in charge of one of the days or trying to do it after or kind of like a pre event or something like that but they're still thinking on that. We also have the good intentions of public, publicating the experiences of our, our members on our social media and different initiatives projects and whatever needs to, to, to get a highlight on. So that's one of our intentions with our social media. And then the next slide. Okay, I'm sorry, we have we don't have a much time so only one minute. The last slide. This is the founder members and our contact information we are LinkedIn and Twitter, and you can always shoot us an email as well. Okay, thank you very much, Claudia. Thank you for sharing your challenges. So Ecuador chapter is a new chapter but I have seen that you have to take some initiatives. So thank you very much. Okay, let's move on to the next chapter. The speaker is any. Okay, start to your. Hello everyone. Thank you so much. Hello everyone. I hope you're having a great day. Most of the people I'm looking at are in bright sunlight I'm sitting in a dark area so yeah it's good evening for anyone who is from this side of the world. My name is a knee. And I just like to give a person introduction first I'm a PhD scholar in decentralized portable generation, and I also happen to be a small chairman of the IVY WP Pakistan chapter. I'm very excited to have you people here and I'm very excited to be one of the very one of the chair chairs to represent the chapters on this global coordination core. Can you move on to the next slide. Okay, so this is something that I'm really proud of this picture is my pride and my focus of the year 2022. So Ecuador just said that they are then that they are relatively new chapter so while in World Water Congress we were the youngest chapter at the time. So we still, we still are younger than Ecuador. So we have started our operations in July this year. And since then we have achieved quite a lot with the help of international water associations headquarters and the fellow chapters as well. So we carried on with us a philosophy which we in Urdu called manji manji means a voter or a person who rose the boat and takes you from one bank to the other bank. So any person who is there to help us who is there to bring the youth into the dialogue and any person who is there to to take care of us is a manji for us. Isabella is a manji for us right. So all of these people are manji and this is an honor that we give to the people in the local context and the international context. This is a view of the members so this picture is full of volunteers full of happy faces, engineers and social scientists and workers and my team, all of them are here in this picture and this was the very first conference that we did just right after the World Water Congress, which was much bigger for challenge. So yeah, so now you see the happy faces and now I'm good to go with more towards the slides. So meet my team. I'm sorry if I'll be boasting about this but I have the best team ever. So this this team consists of a very appreciative representation of women in water and I'm I cannot be more proud of that because Pakistan being a low to middle in country having such instances where women are not represented and the male to female ratio even exceeds 100. So we are the ones who are actually giving a half and half representation of both the genders and trying to bring in the dialogue of the female gender as well. I carry the country position, the country chair position custom is in this call with me he carries the country secretary position. Asman, Shafa, Alina, Sembra, Sami, if you are here kudos to you, you're doing a great job guys. So as Claudia said that there is a complete framework that needs to be completed before you get to have the auspicious Iowa with your name and country. So after going all through that process sees we landed on some calls and some key some goals and some key areas. So the goals are basically going to be especially for the people who want to establish a chapter. They want to be in alignment with the six high level aims of international water associations young water professionals. So, we have mapped these goals and we have taken oath to advocate. I have a YWP, we have taken oath to appreciate the heritage that we carry as a South Asian country, and in the in the outskirts of Middle East and Central Asia. We have taken oath to collaborate and to spread knowledge and awareness. We have taken the oath for professional development of the youth. And we have taken the oath to empower the youth to make decisions and to take the water agenda in the hands and take decisions that really matters. But saying all of this might be a mouthful of word and in order to make it achievable and practical we have divided our complete year into nine key areas. So we are going to conquer one key area at a time one by one, and we have key custodians for these particular purposes. I'd love to have you guys crack that emoji code and then maybe when the discussion session is on we can come on to it backwards and see what have you guessed from the emoji code. The philosophy as I said is manchi, which is an Urdu word meaning a roar or a navigator so we carry this philosophy as a way to give back to the people. Just recently, I have a YWP Pakistan has awarded the guest of honor award to the executive director of IVA, Mr. Kala will have a movie for his tremendous services for the youth. And we have some local manjis with us as well. These are the two people that have helped us throughout the thick and tins of this year. And I guess these people have the most content faces that you will see, just because they are content in lifting up the youth with them. Can we move on to the next slide. Okay, bottom tuss. This was the time when I finally met my family. And you can see you can see a lot of people are here in this call as well. So this was the time when Pakistan got to be represented for the very first time in the very first year of its inception in World Water Congress Copenhagen Denmark and I cannot be more than happy. I really cannot articulate how to put into words the way these people have welcomed me into the family and just a big shout out to the people who are in the call I have seen Jacob I've seen Chelsea. I've seen Augustin it was it was a blessing to me to all and the caption and the picture credit goes to Isabella. She's not in the picture, but she is the main lady behind this. So we have, we had created a video which takes care and takes input of every one of the members that I found during the Young Water Professionals Forum and took their input and you can just scan the QR code and it'll take you to the link and then you can see what every one of them has to say for the Pakistan chapter. And I promise you this is what you will receive as well. Next one. So why WP Pakistan chapter has always been you know, being an academician I'm always very much intensive on the meetings I mean, even if you're meeting on a T I'll call that a meeting, but contrary to my expectations by team turned out to be so professional. So we arranged a complete orientation orientation session on the Independence Day of Pakistan, the 75th Independence Day, and the first, the inception day of either why WP Pakistan so we have created a benchmark, the 14th of August as the day we started working. And our first in person and the longest meeting I guess six hours if I'm not wrong so we sat together for six hours and to decide and develop what to do the next year how to you know keep up to the mark that I was and other chapters have created for us we have to reach the benchmark. And then we just recently had only one picture from that when you put that when he was photogenic so yeah it is a journey of self awareness as well. Because of our we are just discovering new places we are we are going and looking water from a different perspective now. Can we move on to the next slide. Sorry, only one minute please. Okay, so the water talk time is basically we started off with a webinar and then the disproportionate suffering of Pakistani women plus recognition. It was completely handled by my team, and you can see it on the YouTube as well. Next. This was a provocative session and then we took Iowa to different levels, you can see the vice chancellors of the university sitting here and you paste I ever on that platform and try to make the most out of the inclusion of Pakistan in the evil by WP portfolio. Next. And then this was what this one was a spotlight we had a conference, the youth watcher conference the first one of its kind conference, completely organized by young professionals everyone was below 35 years of age, and we were the people to host the people who were seniors in the field like below 35 years of age, hosting the people who are more than 35 years of age was just an amazing event. We have been able to. We have been very lucky in order to get some pretty fruitful relationships along the way global water partnership is one of them. We have been in the impact collective the UN 2023 game changer, and there's our foundation. Next one. And we have just recently started a campus ambassadorships and right now we have 19 ambassadors nationwide in the universities. And how amazing could that be that we are spreading the word in the universities with a population of 63% youth. Next one. We have published some amazing content. Again, all of this is going to my team. It's their devotion. So this is one of the exclusive giveaway of this session. You can scan the keyword code and you'll be redirected to a Google drive folder where you can see and access all of our reports and the guidelines. And all of this has been done since July 26. And if we have made you go whoa, you owe us a follow like our subscribe. There's one SoundCloud channel missing we have just recently started podcasting so you might want to check that out too. The handles remain the same. Join us on either connect and feel free to reach out to us anytime you're more than happy for any collaborations. Thank you so much and I'll be waiting for the questions. Okay, thank you very much for your next presentation. We are all waiting for you are waiting for you to review your emoji code in discussion session. Okay, it's time to move to the next chapter. Okay, the speaker is Matthew. Hi, hi everyone. Brilliant. Could we go on to the next slide please, John. So I'll just start off by apologizing I don't think our presentation will be as as inspiring as the previous but I think it'll be worthwhile nonetheless. So I'm Matthew Whaley vice chair of the UK chapter for young professionals. I'm not an academic or even technical background. I'm a civil servant. I work at the mayor of London's office, previous background as well working in private water companies in the UK. And we also got a chair on the line now, Kirsten Kirsten do you want to just introduce yourself. Hi, thanks Matthew. Hi everyone I'm excited to be here and meet you all. My name is Kirsten faith what I work at Scottish water and currently working in corporate affairs. And, and I can keep part of as we transform and making sure the company is going towards customer and community centricity and lucky enough to work with Matthew on the UK chapter. I really like the idea of the roar the navigator I think you know post pandemic as well it's really interesting way to look at things so I'm I feel so bit sorry for the young water professionals coming up behind us. I think it's going to be a different world so it's a nice, a nice way to look at how we can perhaps help and support navigate them through the same these new times. So I'll just give you a little bit of background around the history of the chapter. So we're small but relatively long step long standing chapter. In the, in the UK, we've been largely had quite a lot of success and that's largely been driven by some small number of previous chairs and contributors. They've brought a lot to the roles that custom and I currently hold now, in terms of effort and energy, and what that has led to some some very very clear strengths, which you know we'll go on to in a bit but also some areas where I think we could improve as a chapter to continue growing to grow our reach. I think one, one thing that's worth saying as well is that and we'll come on to this later as well as we're as an organization as a governing member in the UK we're hosted by the Institute of Water, the Institute of Water is, is a separate membership organization for the UK water sector. It's very similar to IWA. I'd stress we don't compete. Institute of Water is very much based on on the UK, the UK water sector, whereas IWA, we bring a sort of complimentary offer, which is the international outlook. So, over our history we sort of organically grown and contracted over time. You know the focus has swung from different areas to others, but one thing that sort of needed constant strength and I would say something that others are trying to replicate now has been our annual Young Professionals conference. Historically that's always had you know quite good engagement and a good turnout. And again over time depending on who's been the chair or the organizer of that conference. We've ended up with representation from different parts of the sector. So that includes representation from civil service like me from private water companies and wastewater suppliers, consultancy, academia and so on and so forth. So over time if you looked at it we'd have quite a wide reach, but I'd say from year to year it's changed as to where our you know most effective engagement has been across the UK. So throughout that time like I said our main strength has really been the annual conference that's something that you know we've had a lot of good feedback on and it's probably the main effort that we that we deliver as a as a chapter. But beyond that the other things that we constantly are getting pushed to do from from our colleagues and our collaborators is to continue bringing other strengths that IWA has. So the first one being sort of the international connection and the international perspective. In the UK you know we're literally in Ireland but we're also a bit of an island in the sense that we have this quite a strange water sector with private water companies and regulators and so on and so forth. So the international perspective is quite useful to us and also bringing together research for practice. That's something that we were always trying to support and which again we get good feedback on. Outside of that there's some clear areas I think we can improve so first one being a wider program and program of events. We've been sort of quite sporadic in the past I would say with this is organizing webinars and workshops outside of the conference. It's not that we don't do it we don't put effort in but again as you know quite small team. It's difficult to to manage a lot of priorities and with such a clear strength in the conference often that's what gets pushed to the top of the pile whereas other things get dropped. Then beyond that like I said you know an area which is clearly for us a priority at the moment is growing and maintaining engagement. It's always been quite quite an effort to get the engagement that we've had. But we've been successful in it and I think we recognize that going forwards, we could be a little bit more structured and a little bit longer term in our thinking around the engagement of collaborating companies or supporting companies, but also with YWPs as well. And so, just finally before we move on to the next slide just wanted to mention to the Institute of Water Connection as well that's been a quite formal arrangement in the past and they've provided secretariat and accounting type services to us. They were very much allowed for functioning of IWA as a as an organization in the UK to happen practically, but also given their strengths in focusing on the UK sector and the, in particular they have very very good engagement at UK private water level. That could be a really great opportunity for further collaboration going forwards you know to leverage our strengths and leverage stairs and provide a sort of joint offer to YWPs. It could be very compelling on on the right event or opportunity obviously. Next slide please. So I'll take a little bit more of a look into where we're going. I think what we're going to try and implement over the next couple of years. I mean the first one is resourcing. So like I said, the resourcing challenge of organizing the activities amongst two of us can be quite difficult. So we've been moving over the past year or two to developing a group of people to help share the workloads. The key with this obviously is having quite clear responsibilities. So people can be free to make their own decisions and to take take accountability for different programs. Beyond that as well it's to refocus on our strengths. You know it's clear our main added value at the moment that we currently deliver is the conference. So we need to leverage that we need to look to improve that and we need to make sure that that sort of remains as a key unique selling point to engage people on. And beyond that is the growth and the maintenance of engagement in the long term. So we've moved from a couple of years ago a very, very informal approach of basically, you know if we need to a conference just going out and trying to get a little bit based on our contacts to moving towards a kind of more formalized package based system, which has allowed us to leverage more money and to get it over multiple years to give us a little bit more stability in our finances to do work. So that's something we're going to try and continue to do. And also, we're going to look to try and formalize our engagement a little bit more with organizations on a non sponsorship basis to try and you know have organizations expressing the value of IWA to their young professionals from the start and helping us build the engagement that we need. Like I said, we have some UK specific opportunities, the main one being the Institute of water, really looking forward to taking that further. And then finally, we want to really leverage the strengths of IWA global a little bit more. The main things I would say about that is that we had a couple of years ago great opportunity to invite the Danish chapter of young professionals to do a workshop at our conference. It was a really big success for us that something we're looking to replicate with all the chapters so you know doing that collaboration piece. Beyond that we're also very lucky to have the World Wars Congress coming to Glasgow in 2026. So for us you know we're currently doing a lot of sort of planning and thinking about that. And the main thing is is you know how are we going to align our activities with that event, you know how are we going to build the engagement within the UK to make Glasgow a really great event. And on top of that how are we going to build the engagement internationally to put together an overall program of YWP offering at Glasgow, which, which, which is really, really important and leading so a lot to think about on there. And, and yeah so that's basically where we're up to that's a little bit of our experience. I'm really looking forward to hearing some more from the other chapters and feel free to put messages for Kirsten and I in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them although no promises. Okay, thank you very much for your sharing so before the next presentation show tello want to add something regarding the posting the question. Yeah, thank you very much for three presentation very very good presentation I think. So before going to the next presentation I have one comment. We also have one question just now, but after the after two presentation we have a Q&A session. So please post your question or comment if you have with your brief introduction, even during each presentation. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So next speaker is Anya from South Africa. Hi everyone. Great to be here. I hope you can all hear me. Yeah, so maybe just give a big bit of a background to myself my name's Anya Eilers. I work with an engineering consultancy in Cape Town, South Africa. I've been part of YWP South Africa for quite a few years now on and off but have been the national lead since July this year so very excited to be in this position and to be working with all of you. You can go on. Thank you. So maybe just also give a background to the South African young professionals and it's interesting to see the comment that all the question I just came through but we do have an affiliation with both Iowa as well as the Water Institute of Southern Africa we fall under and we have a lot of additional support from institutions and the private sector. So that's our kind of affiliation model. Please go on. I think a big focus of our of our YWP chapter and you'll see because we have a quite a big committee is to really have a local presence in the provinces. This model changed a bit during COVID when a lot of things moved online but traditionally we've always had a strong presence in the provinces and many of the ones you see outlined here. And our activities are generally driven in the provinces so we do a lot of in person events. We do charity events, training sessions a whole range of different work focusing on the provinces. We also traditionally had a really strong focus on our by annual conferences and we're very proud to actually have hosted the the biggest wider P conference back in 2010 so we will really start about quite a long time ago. And since then we've tried to host a by annual conference every year for YWP. We have 300 to 400 delegates and our big conference that I think a lot of people on this call might have attended. I was in the country then but was the eighth by annual conference which happened in Cape Town and that was an international wider P conference, which brought people from around the world. We were supposed to have another conference in 2021 but that was postponed or cancelled because of COVID and the issues associated with having an in person conference and also we were struggling to get funding from corporations. I'd be really interested to talk with the UK program or the UK YWP chapter to see the kind of methods they use to leverage funding for their annual conference which is very impressive to who is that every year. So this is our last my screen there this is our National Committee so we have a kind of an Exco committee that that deals with a lot of operational things. So it's myself and I have two vice lead supporting me and then also coordination lead marketing lead and finance lead. And yeah really fantastic committee and everyone's been brilliant with that support we also have Ashton who everyone knows from the steering that I was doing committee he's our outgoing national lead. I think we have Jessica in the call with us today I think she's our only other member from the committee who's sitting with us and your babies to to give us some praise she's been really instrumental in getting our Twitter and our LinkedIn and our social media pages up and running again, which is really, which has been really great so we've become quite active on those platforms after a silence of quite a few years. Okay then we also have our leads for each of our provinces so I know our committee is quite a big one I think historically we have been quite a big committee but we really, like I mentioned, our, our branches in the provinces is really traditionally where we've had our most engagement so we also have a lead for each of our provinces that are engaged. And they are then supported by kind of the Exco committee, who drives things from his national side. Not all the provinces are represented. And we are constantly trying to recruit people from other provinces. For example we just have someone from Malanga province who's interested in starting a chapter there so yeah I kind of it kind of fluxes between the years but I'll, I'll call the provinces that always typically always have representation it's the Western Cape, I'm cutting and Quasulina towel. And then the smaller provinces, depending on whether they have capacity, they go ahead but we are we try and offer a lot of support for our smaller provinces. Maybe just to also link it back to the, the Iowa Congress that we had, and we're very lucky to have six wide WPs from South Africa that were funded by the Danish Embassy to attend the Iowa World Water Congress, where we hosted a workshop and collaboration with the, with the WPs on global mega trends, and the workforce of tomorrow. And as I mentioned this is part of a knowledge exchange with the Danish Embassy in South Africa. And we also have another few other wide WPs attend the session in their own capacities was a really great way to facilitate that relationship with the Danish chapter. And then we had our Danish counterparts they came and took part in the Water Institute of Southern Africa Congress which happened a month later so it was a very, a very busy month filled with conferences and that happened in Johannesburg in South Africa. And we're the same workshop on global mega trends and the workforce of tomorrow so got really interesting outcomes from. Sorry, it's a track by the messages really interesting outcomes from both of those and we're hoping to now pull together a publication from these. So maybe, yeah, just on what we have done so our committee is relatively new. We usually typically try to have a committee that is 60% previously part of YWP, but our current committee is also brand new committee aside from maybe myself and one or two other people. Learning and engaging, you know, as a new committee, but we've really made a lot of progress in terms of building partnerships both locally and internationally. We really leveraged on the Iowa World Water Congress where we met with both South African and international partners, as well as the WISA conference in South Africa. So yeah so really building up the presence there. We also have part or met a number of different people from other sub Saharan African countries that are either wanting to start up YWP chapters or want to engage with YWP or have their own water related chapter that would like to align with YWP. So we've also been having those kind of conversations and it's been really useful having Ashton sitting in South Africa here who can facilitate these as as the Vice Chair on the on the Iowa Steering Committee. We haven't yet had our annual strategy session unfortunately it keeps on getting delayed for numerous region reasons but that is expected to be happening this weekend. And I saw Pakistan also had a six hour session that is our plan for Saturday as well. We're going to all meet in our relevant provinces and have a six hour planning session for what we want to achieve over the next two years up until July 2024. So that's it from my side. I want to ask if Jessica or anyone else from my committee would like to add anything. I went through that quite quickly. Nothing from my side. I think maybe just interesting comparison point that we do have the sort of provincial presence across our country and maybe to see if anyone has similar experiences. There are a lot of advantages to it but they're also a couple pain points attached to it. So if anyone else has a sort of more distributed model what their reflections are. Okay. Thank you very much for your next presentation. Let's move on to the last speaker Beatriz from Italy chapter. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I want to start with saying, ciao. Hola. Hi. Hello, and hello. I hope the pronunciations are correct. Otherwise, my bad. Sorry. Thanks to Isabella Chotaro and Tian for organizing this meeting was very interesting to hear from the other chapters. I hope I can bring some other ideas on the table. So I'm Beatriz Cantoni. I'm the vice chair of the Italian water professional chapter. I'm postdoc at the Politecnico di Milano, but currently I am in Canada for a visiting period. So I can relate with Claudia about what she said on the issues about the time zone differences. Next slide please. I just want to say that I will speak on behalf of a wider group that I want to thank for the support also in the preparation of this meeting. We wanted to start with why we started this chapter. We felt that in Italy, actually we had a huge gap between young water professional and senior water professional but also gap between academia and industry and water utilities. So we thought that a young water professional chapter from IWA could have been a really good way to bridge all these chapters and stakeholders. It all started actually in 2020, where there was a first Slack group where people were just joining and complaining why in Italy we don't have this young water professional chapter of IWA. Then in 2021 we started especially with Mattia, that is our chair, having some both beer 12 and in-person meetings where we were just saying, okay, we have this idea, we want to establish this group, we want to join. And people were very excited about that. So we started with the proposal definition and all the steps that you are all very aware. And then in February 2022, we were officially IWA branded group. We were very happy with that and we started all our activities. Our vision was to try to create a proactive network, building relations and developing transnational competencies both in Italy and internationally, sharing innovation ideas and best practices through events and social media advertisements. And we really wanted to provide a professional growth to our young water professionals, thanks to the mentoring of senior professionals. So these were the main driving forces. Next please. Here is just an overview of the steering committee. So, beside the coordination team, so the chair, myself and the secretary, we have technical training, innovation, communication, network growth, external relations, event coordinators, social media and treasure. I just really wanted to see how we are organized. We are nationally organized. We don't have regional steering committee. If you see that we have some common steering committee members, I think it would be great to have some communication among different committee members of different groups to help each other in sharing ideas. And these committee members are sort of leaders of some working groups that are responsible for each of these activities. What we tried to do was in all these events that we had at the beginning was to try to engage more people in these working groups. And what we said is we tried to engage them saying what they could learn, sort of the skills that they could learn joining each kind of group here is just a list. Just for some numbers we have 765 followers on LinkedIn from 27 countries and 140 followers on Twitter. And we are reaching with our newsletter 125 members from nine countries. So we are actually happy because we are sort of new but numbers are on our side. But the limitation we see is that as you see 70% of our members are from academia. So we are still struggling to engage more partners from industry and water utility. What we are trying to do is to have a list of potential Italian industries and water utilities that we could reach to let them know we are here. We want to know your young professionals if they want to join our network. The second limitation is in the other graph you see we have level three is our committee member as I told you we are 11. Level two is people in the working group that are not in the committee member and we have only additional 11 people. While all the other members are just sort of receiving the newsletter and the events and all the materials we are providing but they are not really active in organizing events or helping in all the important stuff to do to make these chapters successful. So this is our limitation now we are happy to be here to talk about that. How can we try to engage them that's our current activities we are trying to do. So first of all we send every three months the newsletter by email in all the past and future events. We open the link in the accounts that was a way to to engage more people and we try to organize some virtual and in person informal events. We had a launch event in May and we have an in person meeting in Milan during the IWA conference in July. Then, besides informal events we are trying to now go for a more formal and formative events and webinars. I will talk about it in the next slide. We had some meetings also without the IWA Young Water Professional chapters that was very interesting. Working progress what we are planning to do to engage more people. Maybe the skills that they could learn we are not so convincing. So we are doing a list of actual actions that we are that we want to help. Like for example we will not say okay you can improve your communication skills. Okay you can design our website. Are you in progress? So a specific topic, a specific task that could engage more. We hope our Young Water Professionals. We still have to create the website. We are asking for funding from our governing members but we still have to get a response on that unfortunately. We plan to organize other informal events, webinars for technical training and having a database for all our Young Water Professionals to share where they are working on what. And so it's easier to connect. And now we are thinking to start the mentoring activities. I think it's next slide. I want to let you know that next Tuesday we will have the Young Water Professional Germany chapter, the building bridge event where we will talk about wastewater use in agriculture and to Young Water Professionals from our networks will talk about their experience. I think it's a great occasion to network among the different chapters and we are all invited. So save the date. And actually the next the 29th of November we will have an event with the Young Water Professional from Canada. With that sort of gaming tool to have some roundtables about different topics around water. I think it's what the cloud was saying they will have in January. And then with the next slide I want to thank you all. And hope you want to engage more with us. We're very happy. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much for all the speakers. It's time for Q&A and discussion. If you have any questions, please feel free to type your question in the chat box. Okay, then I will pass now to Shotaro. He will moderate the Q&A and discussion session. Thank you very much for five presentations. And then and also we have, we can see some questions already. Thank you very much. And also question and answer we have. And the first question, I'm not sure this is for which chapter, but yeah, first discussion is we have regional representative and also national committee. We have some problem between the regional and also national committee. And especially for five presenters today, do you have any good idea or good suggestion how to manage the regional representative, regional, and also national committee, or is there any comments or ideas, how to manage regional representatives and national committee. Any other questions from Jessica? I'd like to add to it a bit. Anya, I guess, pointed that first out about the pro province, you know, delegating the committees to the province. We are kind of, you know, nationally structured but what we have done is that we had taken ambassadors from every provincial headquarters. And this way we have actually tried to, you know, go into the universities for the people. The ambassadors living in the same city it is easier for them to go to the university and campuses and spread the word. So this this has been quite easier to work with, especially with the academic sector, because most of the audience that usually the young water and also group C and experience are students. So that particularly is very useful in that sense. Okay, thank you very much. Is there any comments? Oh, we have some already some questions to go to the next one. So from, yeah, one question focus on the sponsor. So is there any chapter to have some sponsors from out of the YWB committee, or do you have any plan to have the sponsor to manage the YWB committee? Maybe I can, I can start with the sponsorship. Yeah, so it's a really good question around sponsorship. The short answer is with a lot of difficulty. We've managed to raise funds in the past. I think that there's a couple of things to sort of consider when when looking at it or at least in the UK. The first is to think, you know, what is the value add to these organizations of what we're doing so we generally collect our sponsorship for our conference. For us it took us a little while but you know, we recognize that it was hugely beneficial for organizations to send young professionals to the conference and not only that to be seen to be supporting young professionals at the conference for a number of different reasons, you know, one that is, you know, helping to accelerate development in the workplace, helping young professionals build links within the sector so they're less likely to leave. Career development opportunities also the opportunity to advertise yourself to potential, you know, new talent in early careers in the industry and so on and so forth. So we had to do a lot of thinking at the start about you know what what those different lines were on the value that we could bring both in a generic sense like I've highlighted there but also you know what the value of specifically the conference is. And then after that it's about being quite quite bold but not not arrogant and being happy to to contact different people at a decision making level in different organizations have conversations and see where it takes you, you know, it inevitably you're going to get disappointment and being turned down and actually that's going to be most of the time people are going to say no. But if you if you reach out to enough people you start building relationships, eventually you'll start to see sponsorship coming through. And not only that I found that the people who sponsored us in the past are the most likely to sponsor us in the future. So you start to learn you know who your supporters are who your, who your friends are in the wider industry. And that's why I say when we say we're looking to build our engagement across different organizations. It's not just a sponsorship level you know we now realize which organizations and which people really see the value in the work we're doing and who we can bring along to you know expand our activities and so on. So, a lot of difficulty and you've got to be ready to be disappointed, but I think that, you know, go to the top, you know reach out to directors and CEOs and also be happy to move on. Justin, is there anything else? Yeah, I was just going to add to that Matthew, and I think there's something in need as well about being quite granular with the sponsorship. So you know what might off what might work for one organization might not work for another. And that flexibility as well perhaps having some sort of structure, you know enough to approach them but then also being willing to enter into a bit of a conversation, a bit of a discussion. Some might want a longer relationship with the chapter some might want something a little bit more short term so I would say, I would say take Matthew's advice and be bold but at the same time also have that negotiation as well and find out what they're looking for. It's definitely an employee and young water professional market just now as well as the chances are that it will be something in it for them for them to and it's just trying to identify what that is and how we can offer and build that relationship going forward. Thank you very much for the comments from UK. Quickly, I have the comment also question. So is there any change and is there any difference between Kobe and the after Kobe, one comment from the onion. So, is there a company's motivation, a change because of the Kobe motivation to the fund was be a sponsor. Well, not in the UK, enormously. Because the sort of money that we're looking for and I recognize the ECO was sectors very wealthy. I think as compared to globally that the sort of money that we're asking for is in the order of magnitude of a few thousand pounds which in the UK is a huge amount to our organization conferences and keep prices low for YWPs but for the organizations that we're talking, talking to quite often, you know, very big water companies on multinational consultancies. They're often fairly happy to provide that sort of level of support without really thinking about it. So, you know, we're not saying it's got easier after COVID but we were never in the sort of asking for the type the amount of money that we would necessarily that would necessarily end up being affected by the kind of global climate changes and again that's just a reason. So, the main reason for that is due to kind of like the relative wealth of the water and engineering sector, I would say. Thank you. And we have only 10 about about 10 minutes so we go to the quickly. And this is the question for only question for the Italy chapter. Could you explain about the main mentoring support proposed by Italy chapter more. We're actually starting thinking about that. And actually maybe Claudia I don't know if you want to say something because she's our responsible for this activity. Yeah, I mean the innovation coordinator but I'm also in the other group that is the technical group where we actually promoting the mentorship and we're actually trying to realize how what's the best way of actually having a mentorship problem. For example, we thought about LinkedIn. So provide a series of different mentors names and to, and then couple them to students or other people, the other young water professionals. So we don't have a really clear defined structure because we are waiting also to have this website. So everything is linked to the website because we would also think that the website could be a way to promote mentors. So, yeah, right now we don't have a really clear structure but we have ideas of what are good ways of proceeding. So if someone else has a really mentorship program on going. I saw some of some of the chapters have one I think the Danish chapter, if I remember well I saw something on the LinkedIn. I think some of the chapters have a program so it would be nice also for us to have some inputs on. Yeah, good ways of proceeding. Okay, thank you very much. I'm just going to the next question, but before that, Nella, you lazy hand. Is there any comments of the sponsorship or something. Yeah. I just wanted to comment. I'm a chair of young water professional Denmark just wanted to share our experience. And also I was very interested to know like what they, what's the other chapters experience. We've had sponsorships for for many years. And in the in the past years, we did a lot of work on putting like organization like more structure into the way we do things and one of the things we did was with the sponsorships. For example, Freda, she's our she's our treasure and she put together, like a sponsorship program with different types of sponsorships for with different lengths, so that we will have sponsors for X amount of years for different amounts of money so that it will it will help us maintain like stable income over the years even though we might have more or less sponsors over the years. Yeah, I think it might be interesting at some point to, like maybe have. Yeah, I don't know, like a focus on on this will love to, like maybe help other chapters or hear from other chapters and how you do it. I think it's very important to internalize and be confident about the value that you provide to the companies, which is, I think, a lot and like be. I think you are clear of what you can provide. I think it's easier to get those those partnerships we, for example, we make commitments to send them our newsletters to have visits or their companies and talk to their young people have free invitations to our conferences things like that. Okay, thank you very much. Let's go to the next question from. From Claudia, this is maybe the new topic. So, um, the YWP each YWP chapter, how their relationship with their IWA country chapter and how important is that partnership for your YWP chapter. This question, I think this question is like, yeah, how to make the relationship between country chapter and also YWP chapter in each country, and also how to, or how, how much they use the energy to make the good relationship or how to, how much that commit to make the relationship. That's a good question, I guess. So is there any comments from chapters. Maybe I can start. Okay, thank you. I think this is not so easy for us. I would say I don't know if I want to say more but it really depends. If they are engaged and if they want something to happen, then they will be very active. We, we are writing a, I think every two or three months. We have a sort of summary of some source papers, articles in Italian that they would post on their website. Actually, we thought they would post in their website, but then they are posting it in a sort of newsletter that they have. But this is something that they really cared about. So we said, okay, we think it's something that could give us also opportunity to let other people know that we are here. So we were very happy. They actually organized an event in a water festival in Italy. And we were invited. So we had a spot to let people know we are here. So this was a good point. On the other side, when we have some requests, for example, for the website funding, then things become a bit slow. Immediately. We don't know why. Actually, maybe we know why. But yeah, they become slow. So this is, I think, a struggle for us. Because if we are not supported by our governing member, then thinking about having other sponsors supporting us, make me make us feel a bit not so confident as Maria was saying right now. So, yeah, the sponsorship part is our next issue to overcome for sure. But we are, I'm very curious to hear from the other. Thank you very much for the comments. And we have still some question and also answer in the zoom chat, but we only have the five minutes. So I want to open the question and or comments. So is there any comments or also the question to the each chapter. Actually, we don't have much time. So it's okay to say what you raise your hand. It's okay. I do have some comments on this. I really liked the discussion that we had it. And I think that the question related to funding to find a sponsorship. And this one related to the competition, how do you manage this and related to to the last question that Claudia has made in terms of and also following up on British comments. It's difficult to go to the next stage on this and but I'm sure from base I don't own all the reports that are read from the chapter. This is not something that is only with the Italian chapter or with the Victorian chapter. This goes with all the chips all of you are facing different levels but the same difficulties. So this kind of a platter from that we have here is a learning opportunities where you can share what we can learn from each other but also how can we solve the situation that you all are facing. I noticed that sponsorship is a show difficulty that engagement during Congress is also an issue. So for for each of the chapter present here and not only those that were speaking, but also we have representatives from other chapters that have Diana from from the Columbia. We have Philip Jacob that is also from the from the Ghana chapter. All of you are facing the same situation so thinking about it how how can we solve this. It's a hard question. Jacob, any comments as the chair of the rather please during comment on this. Yes, thank you. I think there's something that that's a committee we are also trying to find an answer to. But one of the things that I've come to realize, which I think Matthew mentioned is the value that you can offer to the organizations that are in a position to donate money towards the wider view please. I think we've not really communicated that very well. So it's important that we look in that regard how do you package the wider view community so that people would be interested in sale. Why don't we invest in this group of people because we know this is the value that we are going to get in return so I think we have to focus more on that and then first we go for other solutions to Yeah, I'm sorry if the time's up but I just have a question and you guys, if I've seen two chapter slides having, you know, Siva in one, and there was Institute of Water and the other the I water chapter I really cannot remember the chapter names. So it's like, you know, having a mentor with you all the time it's like it's like an organization and orders sibling with you, who is going to accept things. One of the difficulties that we have, even though when we have you know secure the funds they have the level of trust issue between the seniors giving away the funds to the young people they're always concerned about that, whether you'll be able to utilize that in a responsible manner or not so they usually are looking for a branded account, and some company or organization attached to it so that they can transfer the amount to them, rather than to the chair or the treasure itself. How do you actually you know, generate that kind of symbiotic relationship either with Eva, the Siva, or with the I water for the respective chapters if you can add a bit to it. Yeah, sorry, I'll just jump in about I water so I water is the UK with the Institute of Water, and ours is a formal agreement so I was was done by senior people so by the, the CEO of, of Institute of Water and also by by IWA as well organizationally. So, so that's been that that was an agreement that happened quite a long time ago now that I water would provide the secretary at roles and so there was always a sort of level of trust there with the high level buy in that this would happen. And speaking to sponsors like you said it's been a huge benefit to us because it gives us a company bank account and not only a company bank account one that's very very trusted in the water sector Institute of Water that we can use and that we can use to manage our funds and that we can use to to to senior people to get the, the agreement drawn up properly by the proper legal channels and everything. And, and have the sort of organizational structure as well put in place to manage it. So that's that that's what I would say. And what since that's been done it's been very very easy working like that so. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for the discussion. We already time has come. So, can you give the final remarks. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for your for sharing your experience. I do believe that we have learned a lot of from different chapters, because there are many great and effective initiatives. Yes, I'm inspired because I know there's still a lot of thing that we can do to get sponsorship to empower our young water professionals, and to make cover chapter more influential in multi sector. So, I think it's really food for today. Thank you. Thank you very much for your participating and for your sharing. So, at the end of the global coordination call, Isabella will highlight some updates from IWA and IWA young water professionals there in committee. Okay, so Isabella. Thank you, Tien. So, once again, thank you all for joining today. I have some quick information from the second secretary yet. And I'd like to start with our call for the UFACC for SCG6. This will be part of our engagement to promote youth in the water sector in the partnership with grandfills. So, if you scan the QR code, you can see all the requirements for this call, and you can apply until the 25th of November. And you'll be, if you apply and you're selected, you'll be joining our delegation of 12 young water professionals to participate in the UN-23 Water Conference in New York. Following this, let me go over to that. Yes. We have a webinar this week about science to policy from earth from reservation to legislation. And I don't invite you all to sign up and attend. It will be really interesting on this. And for those that are in Spain, we have our digital water summit there. And I sent you all the chairs, the counter chapters chairs, regarding an opportunity for our YWP so reach out to your chairs and let me know if you are interested in joining and attend the digital water summit. If you have any other member that is not part of IWA but is interested in joining and being part of it, especially for applying for the grandfills call, you can use and share with them the discount code for new membership on this. And follow us on social media. And again, if you have any kind of questions and comments that you want to make and also to know more about a chapter and getting the mail address for another chapter. You can just drop me an email here. I have my email below so yeah. And thank you all for coming and joining us today. I hope that this is just the start of the conversations. And then that we can continue engaging our YWPs more and more within IWA but also in the water sector. Chotaro and Chia, do you want to add something? Yeah, from my side. Again, thank you very much for today and the keeping touch. Yeah. Thank you everyone. Bye bye. Thank you everyone. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.