 Welcome, everyone, to this panel of the International Capacity Development Symposium at IHE. And we all wish those of us who are not in Dell, we wish we are there and enjoy the sunny weather. I wish you a good morning in Europe, but also a good afternoon, good evening, where else you are joining from. You're almost welcome to this panel session on managing change and transition. And we have two speakers with us. And they are Hank Oving, who many of you have already watched yesterday when he delivered his keynote. And he is, of course, the special envoy of the Netherlands for Water and a major inspiring person to inspire change around the world at different levels. And we have Vina Srinivasan with us, who is a director of the Center for Social and Environmental Innovation atri in Bengaluru, India. So welcome, Hank and Vina. We will be giving you the floor and asking you and engaging in discussion after. We reflect on some of the inputs we got from a panel of experts before today. And that we have recorded in a video. But before we see the video, I'd like to ask Anna, our host, our tech host, to introduce some points, Anna, of how participants can make best use of this session. Thank you, Vita. On the right-hand side of your screen, you will be able to see the chat functions where I can see that there's already been sent some good morning messages. Over there, down below, you'll find the write your message here, which is where you can make the entry of your own questions. Just above the chat, you will find a handout which has further details on how you can engage during this session before, during, and after. This leads me to specify that you can ask any questions during the time of this seminar following the code that was stated on the top of the chat. But questions will be answered during the live Q&A. That will have a start and ending time. During the session itself, there will be some polls that will be popping up just above the chat function itself. Thank you. Back to you, Vita. Thank you so much, Anna, for getting us all ready. What we want is for this to be an interactive session. And for you, participants from all over the world, feel very warmly welcome here, participate through the chat. And as Anna will explain also later, this session, this panel, this session, is very much opening the door to a new kind of discussion that we want to have, and we need to have more of in our sector when it comes to capacity development. So think of yourself as opening doors, getting to know each other, building relationships with each other, so that we, in partnership with IHE, can actually make changes happen, which is the whole objective of this symposium. So I see lots of people already joining, welcome from different places, all the way from Asia, from the Netherlands, and from close by in The Hague. And Hank is greeting participants as well. We have, of course, our wonderful friends from IHE. And I want to acknowledge them quickly for taking on this challenge to move the symposium online. That, as you could imagine, is one of the challenges that people take on during this time of COVID and COVID adaptation. And I think it allows all of us more possibilities to engage now, but also afterwards, when normally we would go to a physical event and then we take the plane or the train home, but now we are actually opening the door to a longer conversation. And in that conversation, we need to be a bit provocative today. So before we start the video, let me just ask you to reflect that knowing what has to change is not the same as making changes happen. I changed my career, for one example, because I found that in my work to influence water projects and water investments and capacity development, it's really hard. The water sector tends to be fairly conservative. Lots of hierarchical organizations that are risk averse for a good reason, because water is so fundamental as a human need. So we have to be very careful about how we provide water and manage it. And that also means that change is not that easy to do. And that's what we are confronting today. And in my experience at the Asian Development Bank earlier on, I saw those difficulties. And that inspired me to actually shift my career and go back to school and learn more about psychology of influencing and how I can help people to become leaders in the 21st century way of being influencers. And that's maybe one thing we can touch on, and some of the panelists have mentioned. So without further ado, Anna would like to ask you to play the video and let us listen to the panelists who have helped inform this discussion. I wish you happy watching. Hello, everyone. My name is Antonia Levagnante. I am director of Young Water Solutions, an NGO based in Brussels that embowers young people to become a water and sanitation entrepreneurs. And here I am sharing my perspective on one side as a young professional in the water sector, but also in a way sharing my experience in small and medium-sized wash NGOs. So when we talk about capacity development and managing change at sector and at country level, one of the main challenges that we have, I think, is bringing new players on board. And this is related to last year's slogan on World Water Day, which was leaving no one behind, especially women and youth. In the past decades, in the water sector, we relied a bit too much on private and public organizations that had the resources to maybe unilaterally implement solutions on communities, solutions to water and sanitation issues, without necessarily involving that community. Whereas in the past years, fortunately, we have started to understand the need to empower that local community, not only in decision-making and in validation of the water solutions that are being proposed, but also empowering them and empowering the youth in providing them the enabling conditions for them to be part of the solution as well. Young people have their own ideas, their own, they are committed, they have solutions, sometimes even technical solutions, that they would like to apply to solve their own issues. But they are missing the resources to do so. And I think that it's our responsibility to be able to support them with training, with mentorship, with funding that they need to test their solution and benefit their community. Now, if we go to the organizations and team level, one of the challenges that I see here, and it's more related to my views or my experience in a small and medium or medium wash organization. And it's the fact that most small and medium-sized organizations in the water sector are working with project-based funding. So it's a project that we have received from donations to implement a certain project and deliver certain outcomes. And it's because of the limited amount of funding, it's difficult to spend on very important expenses that are not strictly those related to the project. And this has multiple consequences on one side, the fact that many organizations are still struggling to find mechanisms for operation and maintenance in the long-term of the wash infrastructure that is put in place just because the funding is limited. The funding has, the projects have a start and an end date and the funds need to be reported by the time and it's really hard to get funding that can continue over time to be spent on O&M. That's one thing. Another thing is the discussion related to having leaders versus managers. Actually, both are needed in an organization and managers are more focused on doing an effective use of their resources to achieve the expected outcomes. And a leader is more focused on guiding the organization towards the place that the organization has decided to be, to develop a strategy, to develop partnerships, the resources. And when we have too much project funding and not a lot of other unrestricted funding, we need managers because we need people who can deliver very effectively the outcomes related to the project. There's not a lot of funds and ability for a person that has leadership capacities and that can spend the time that they need in creating the strategies and the partnerships that the organization needs. And finally, when we talk about the individual, the personal level, for me, it might be one of the most important ones because none of the changes that I described before can happen if we continue with the same mindset. We need to build our skills, our abilities in emotional intelligence and creative thinking, in adapting to change. If there's something that is COVID-19 has taught us, it's that we need to be able to adapt and that those that just remain inflexible in the way or are stuck in the way that the way that they were doing things before can be left behind because those that can adapt are able to turn these challenges into opportunities. But it's not just about taking courses and getting these skills. It's also mainly about applying them. We need to have the space and the opportunity to incorporate these things into our everyday life, into our work because there is nothing more inspiring than a person that walks to talk and that a person that can really lead by example. And I think that if all of us are trying to make an effort in this direction, then the water sector will be able to overcome its challenges and thrive a lot faster than they would normally do. So thank you very much and I hope that everything that you are taking from this symposium, you will be able to transform it into your everyday decisions and your work decisions as well. It's a privilege to be on this distinguished panel and to see colleagues that have interacted in the past in the sector. And I really appreciate the partnership that IEG has with the African Development Bank. I've been in the water sector as water said for quite a long time. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my experience and insights into this very important. Our primary entry point is the country. The regional member country is our client, our primary partner. The bank has a 10-year strategy that puts a lot of emphasis on development of skills and technology to make sure that we contribute to strengthening competitiveness in the countries and to help match the requirements of the job market. The bank also emphasizes investments in infrastructure, skills, enabling environment, et cetera. As you know, the water sector contributes to jobs in a very big way, 75% of all jobs. So it's a great opportunity. Water development is not just about access. It's also enabling business, enabling industry, enabling commerce, et cetera. So this is very well articulated in the bank's strategy. Bank's main product is lending to projects. The water sector is a big part of lending and the board from the bank. And projects for the most part will have components addressing capacity-building needs. This can be at different levels. It can be very focused on the project, making sure that there is enough capacity to deliver the project. And it can also be to help a country design and implement a reform. We've seen a lot of that over the last two decades. It can also be, as I said, it's a country, but it's also other organizations. You'll probably know about the Africa Water Association. This is a network of utilities in Africa. Those are important partners for the bank, not only to support their own delivery of their own mandates, but also because they have capacity-building as part of what they do to utilities in Africa. And we also want to make sure that our clients get the best available knowledge globally. So it's not just the project. It's not just what they want to do internally in terms of designing and implementing reforms, institutional development, development of strategies, policies, et cetera. It's also to make sure that we help them to engage with what's going on globally. It will take leadership because it starts to broaden how we view the water sector. It starts to point to the need for more expertise that we haven't had in the water sector. And we need to be able to recognize this. We need to be able to find this expertise where it is. But we also need to influence our governments to also make sure that this skill development is broadened to include this new skill set. Now, in the bank, it's not just not nice. In the bank, for example, we are increasingly engaging with the climate change department. We are, by the way, just about to take a new water policy to the board. And it's very integrated. It takes an excess approach. And it means working very much with others in the environment, in urban development, in climate departments. So learning to work cross-sectorally, that's one. Secondly, we have to think about the investments in a much more integrated way. How can we use, for example, one piece of infrastructure to solve multiple needs? Can we have one piece of infrastructure provide water supply services, irrigation services, hydro? But also storage. Africa needs to build resilience, which, as you know, is quite low on the continent. So planning is becoming more complex. Implementation is going to need many more, much more expertise than before. The regulatory burden is going to be increasing. And so we have to open our minds to working much more broadly than has been the case in the sector before. And a narrow focus to addressing sector issues isn't going to deliver the impacts that we need. I'm so happy to hear those examples and also the one that you mentioned, that money was not the central issue. That with a modest amount of money, change can be achieved when we have the right approach. And you mentioned a bit earlier that you have a lot of experience actually working in different teams. And also, like we said, we want to offer the participants in this symposium some tips, some insights for their individual development and what has to change there to be the water professionals and the capacity development professionals of the future, sort of in a true 21st century manner. So I wonder if you could, you know, help us in closing with a few tips for how to do good teamwork and how teamwork can help to change capacity in the water sector and what that means for individuals. What question should water professionals ask themselves now in terms of how they should change, how they work in the sector, what skills they need, you know, what attitude perhaps they need to go forward and deliver a really great outcome. Having time to reflect on your own goals as an individual, having time to reflect on what your needs are, you know. Sometimes I'm reminded of a leadership training that I attended where many trainees actually, at least in the groups that I was in, were saying that how they have no time to reflect. It's so busy, you know, we're trying to meet these targets and we never have a moment to breathe. So we have to create moments to think and reflect. Because if we can't take care of ourselves, it's very hard to take care of anyone else. So take care of yourself, reflect, find time, find the space to think about what you want to achieve, what are your strengths, what are your development needs and find ways to have your development needs addressed. And then understand the people you're working with, engage with them, understand, let them understand, work with them to develop a vision, a vision that's exciting them. Not everybody will come along in the beginning, but you need to develop a critical mass of people who can see a vision that can help you carry everybody else along. And sometimes the people you're not able to convince very quickly, sometimes are your best sources of information. As long as they're asking questions and you are able to respond, people will see if there is alignment between what the team objectives are, your objectives. And finally, you want to make sure you have a vision that your business, you have a vision for the business, you have an ability to manage the business and that the three, there's a lot of alignment between those three levels. And with that, I think you stand a good chance of influencing people, inspiring people. As I said earlier on in this discussion, being able to have everybody join a conversation to articulate an approach, a vision, a project design, et cetera. Conversations are really, really important. Right, we often say that leadership happens in conversations. Yeah, I agree with that entirely. And then I'd like also to resonate what you mentioned about the awareness, the self-awareness, the situational awareness and the importance of developing reflection routines and to also ask yourself the right questions and ask people in the projects you work with the right questions so that you don't jump in with your solution, but rather you find a vision and a solutions together, which may be different solutions than we found 10 or 20 years ago because of the changes that are taking place in the world and the new insights that we have discovered. Absolutely, absolutely. I think that there still is tunnel vision in the sector where you still have surface water thinking in an increasingly groundwater or at least conjunctive use world. And this is particularly true of the context of India where a lot of the agencies that actually are involved in water management remain surface water agencies. There usually is a groundwater agency in the state, but it tends to be a task only with regulation of bore wells and of scientific data collection, perhaps some model building and estimation of rechargeable balance, groundwater balance and so on. But there's very little integration of that into the primary agencies that drive policy and investment in the water sector. So I think that's kind of the first roadblock that needs to be addressed when we talk about capacity building. The second block that needs to be addressed, I think, is that a lot of the capacity building is focused on technical capacity. So even where there is acknowledgement of ground and surface water integration and so on, the capacity building for the state agencies or the engineers is really about understanding those aspects. But when we actually ran training programs for a lot of the state engineers, the recurrent theme that came up from the engineers themselves was the difficulty they had in managing the political economy, so to speak. So they were honest about being forced to sign bills, about political interference in decisions and about not being able to achieve what they would like to achieve even technically because the local politician had different ideas and so on. I think that civil society organizations can play an important role of being watchdogs, but they are seriously underfunded in the technical capacity. So there's been a lot of push in the last few years to put data in the public domain and increasing amounts of data are being put in the public domain, but often the data are deliberately designed to be not useful. So for example, in the case of groundwater, they will put average district groundwater levels in the public domain, but not the screening depths of the monitoring wells, the actual lag long of the monitoring wells, and so on. And so it's very difficult, especially with a low monitoring density is to actually reconstruct a groundwater head map, for example. So it becomes really difficult for civil society watchdogs who don't have the technical capacity or money to be able to match the government agencies in their technical capacity or at least ability to put out information to be able to counter it in any way. So I think that if we really want to think about the water sector in a very, very serious way, we need to address the problem by its horns, address the political economy, create a robust civil society that's well-funded and well-capacitated and then address these larger questions about IWRM and thinking about integration of blue and green waters, ground and surface water, water and society and so on. At the second scale, which is the scale of organizations, I think it's that there are excellent leaders everywhere who are capable and they're willing to reform. Often, as I said alluded to before, if the problem is the political economy, the question that a lot of these leaders faces, how do they push the envelope far enough but without getting fired right away? And if that's the case, then I think that we almost need to create capacity and to document best practices in how you can reform from within, but reform when the larger context is not in your favor. And what kind of leaders you need to create, what kind of skills do they need to be given? At least in India, we have a situation where what organizations start with assistant engineer, executive engineer, superintendent engineer, chief engineer, I mean, it's basically only engineers. And so this idea that you might need to have hydrogeologists or you might need to have economists that could perhaps one day help the organization is simply unthinkable. And if it's unthinkable, then we have to ask the question, does IWRM even meaningful if we can't create organizations that allow respect for different forms of knowledge in an integrative way? And I think that it starts right at the engineering curriculum. Most engineering colleges have very, very traditional curricula and there's almost as a hierarchy in disciplines where engineers are above the pure sciences and those are above the humanities and so on. And so therefore creating a culture where different forms of knowledge are recognized to be equally valid, to be worth learning has to start right at the engineering schools. At the scale of individuals, I think that, as I alluded to before as well, in order to have some of these reforms happen, we do need to have individuals and the mindset change start at the level of the individual. And this means that you need to be able to create and invest in leadership programs right from the bottom. Now, being a woman engineer, I thought that it might be worth specifying that we, but in particular, need specialized leadership programs for women in the water sector. It remains a very masculine space even though we've reached a point where sometimes 20, 30% of these agencies are now people by women, but the women report absolutely appalling conditions under which they work. I've heard cases of people saying after they came back from maternity leave, they were just made to sit in the corner, not given an assignment. When they fought and asked for an assignment, we're told to just go to the parking lot and count cars, this sort of thing. And I think that a lot of the women struggle and then eventually give up altogether. Now, personally, I have benefited from leadership coaching and I believe that therefore, this is something that we ought to be investing in for women in the water sector and particularly women who are sitting within these very, very engineering dominated male water agencies. But the leadership coaching needs to be not just for the women. As I said, we need leadership coaching for the leaders of some of these agencies who want to do the right thing but can't. But that leadership coaching needs to go all the way to the field engineers who are facing these enormous pressures on bi-local politicians, bi-local contractors and they want to do the right thing but they're just unable to overcome the circumstances in which they are placed. And so I think overall, we need individuals who are capable leaders, they're able to, they've given tools and capacity to deal with the kinds of challenges that they face. And we need to invest in having a mindset change to start at the individual, then at the level of leadership of individual organizations and then eventually build up to the sector. Thank you. I'm so happy that we could show you these discussions we had in advance with our panelists. I thank William who has led an organization in Africa, National Water in Uganda on a change story which if you don't know about it yet then please go and study it. It's a phenomenal story and a great testament to the change that's possible and a proper introduction to our debate, our discussion today. I also acknowledge Antonella and Bambui and Vina. And of course, we're very lucky to have Vina with us as well as keynote speaker Hank Oving, the special envoy for water in the Netherlands who has already given his keynote speech. Vina will do that a little bit later today and they have given us that big picture of things that need to change, illustrating the changes that we are in in our world. And again, I would like to also acknowledge that that change may look different according to where you are. We have people from joining our discussion today from many different places in the world. And we want to, in this symposium over this today and the next days, we want to build bridges from those keynotes, those bigger pictures that inspire, compel and challenge us to find ways to actually give these hands and feet. How does change happen? How can we make transitions to catalyze change and get momentum? What does that look like? We have already offered you that framework of looking at the country and the sector that stimulates you to look at your organization, your team and then you as an individual for each of us as water professionals, what does this mean for us? What does it mean also individually for the people we work with and how can we help them? So that when this symposium wraps up with the Delft agenda, but also starts a process of implementation and discussion and dialogues to test that, if you will, to demonstrate that, then we are in touch and we can all see how we can make change happen. So in our discussion today, this is a discussion involving all of us who joining this panel. We're privileged, I will be asking some questions first to Hank and to Vina, but at the same time, I'm also asking those questions to you and the first question I want to ask you, if we look at all these changes that are needed, then what does that mean for us? And in particular, I want to ask you three things. What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to do more of? And what do we need to start doing? Now, I'm going to ask those questions to Hank and Vina now, but I'm asking it to all of you also in the chat. So please contribute in the chat from your perspective, maybe at one of these three levels or in the context of the country and the situation where you are, where we want to make changes in capacity development to be more effective to respond to these global changes that Hank and others have referred to in their keynotes. Come up with something, let's start concrete. What should we stop doing? What should we do more of? And what should we start doing? And with that, can I ask Hank to start all with something that we should stop doing, do more of and start doing, Hank? It's always tough to give short answers to very short doubt questions. If I have to limit myself in this capacity, I would easily say we have to stop treating, I'm sorry, Wouter. One is do everything by ourselves as a water community, but specifically as a male dominant water community, as Vina also touched upon and others. It has to be inclusive, it has to be with all, it has to be about empowering youth, positioning women on top. So stop thinking we can solve things by ourselves. Water is related to everything, so the only way to deal with this is with everybody. And the second thing we need to stop it is to invest in the examples of yesterday, the projects of yesterday, the infrastructure typologies of yesterday. And especially now in the times of a current crisis, but everywhere in times of crisis, the response often is to repeat the mistakes of the past. And I said this before, investing in stupid infrastructure is going to make us more vulnerable than more resilient and sustainable. But now also in this current crisis, there is this idea that we can take projects of the shelf and invest for jobs, but that will only be more disasters. Then what should we do more? That is a little bit the same, integration, inclusion and sustainability are the three perspectives of moving ahead, doing it with all, by all, empowering and investing in this enabling environment across all steps of the process. But also across all needs, really integrating types of demands and sectors in a holistic comprehensive approach. So inclusion and integration are directly linked, but also in a sustainable way. We have an agenda, the SDGs, the Paris Agreement. We know where to go and what to do. There is a massive urgency every day. It's a pandemic, it's climate, it's gender, it's inequality, it's conflict, it's economics. So the urgency, we almost don't need to discuss, but we need this a different pathway. So we have to do more of that. What should we start? And it's almost like we already start, but it's often very vulnerable and small. So I think taking more pride in the vulnerable initiatives around the world where people feel empowered and are empowered, where innovations are developed and looking really at those that make a difference. It is not that you start something as if all of a sudden we can do things anew and if we were all stupid, no, we are very smart and we're very capable. And our amazing Antonella talks about this all the time. And Vina and others too, they're amazing examples. So it's not that all of a sudden now we saw the light and we can start anew, but I do think we have to put the light on all these interventions around the world driven by people and people's needs that we need to find way to empower, strengthen, capacitate and then replicate and scale. I think the next big thing will be a lot of small things. I haven't invented that sentence myself. It comes from a Belgian artist. It's on a university building, I think in Ghent in Belgium, but I was really inspired by it. That the next big thing will indeed be a lot of small things and in making sure that a lot of these small things will have this bigger impact we need. I think that is where we have to start. Thank you, Henk. Thank you for taking on the challenge and sharing some examples of what we should stop. What we should do more of and continue, but also what we should start and that's something we particularly want to look at. In fact, perhaps looking at what to stop and looking at what to start may be in some way the most important. And I acknowledge you and all our participants are ready to start also take on this challenge. And several of you have shared it is not that easy to do. We're stops being stuck in complexity. Yes, so how do we do that? So during this session, as we take this discussion forward, let's find concrete examples and you may be inspired by looking at the level of your organization, your teams, individually, what difference can you make and how can you share that then with others? So over to Vina. Vina, the same question to you. What should we stop? What should we do more of and what should we start? And I acknowledge that you have come up with a very compelling story and about the situation in India, which is a universe in itself. And here we are now in this symposium where we are from all over the world. So standing in a way on your own shoulders and the example that you have shared, share something that you think could appeal to all of us in terms of what we need to stop, do more of and start. Well, I'll start with what should we do more of. And I think I'm going to borrow Heng's phrase from yesterday on investment of millions to save billions. So I think clearly the fact that we're having this conversation about capacity building and leadership is something that we need more of and it needs to continue. And I think without a doubt there is enough data to show that leaders can be created. They're not just born. And therefore, if you invest in mindset change in individual people, that's much, much cheaper and much more scalable because that's one of the examples of where a small change can actually have very, very big implications. And I think that is something we need to keep the conversation going, maybe do it differently, but keep the focus on capacity building and leadership. In terms of what we should stop, I think we need to stop working in silos. Bambui mentioned that as well in her remarks. And by that, I mean not just as disciplines. And of course, there's a lot of the commenters here saying that we need to bring social sciences in, integrate them with economics, non-economic social sciences as well as engineering. But I also mean the way we operate as players in the water sector. So there's still a lot of relatively little coalition building and partnership building in the water sector. And it's hard to do because I think we all recognize that the hardest of all things is not the intellectual side of it, but it's the people side of it. And just getting four people to agree on something is hard. And so that makes making a working in partnerships and in coalitions much harder. I saw one of the comments by each of us saying, how do we build collective leadership and not just individual leadership? And I think that was a great point. So I think that there are specific steps that can be taken to promote these kinds of more collective working in the water sector, working between academia, policy practice. I talk about that later in my keynote as well. And I think that in terms of funding, for example, a lot of the times I feel that the approach of the organizations is siloed because the funding agencies are also siloed. Often you have three agencies replicating and duplicating the same work in the same place, but giving three different grants to three different organizations. And so I think a lot of the synergizing has to happen at all levels, from the funding agencies as all the way down to the implementation agencies. What should we start doing? I think we need to start listening to people. And I think Henk spoke about this idea of the infrastructure of the past. I think that's not doing the infrastructure of the past, but I think what needs to change in order to change that is we need to start listening to the aspirations of people. So often I find that, and this is particularly true in a country like India, which has a massive, massive youth population. The young ones are something very different from what people have wanted in the past. And often when we talk to farmers, they don't, the youth don't want to be farmers. They certainly don't want to be subsistence farmers. And a lot of what people want to do and how much, what do they want to use or what they want to use is driven by the aspirations of people. And so I think listening to people saying, what do you want, what do you imagine the future would look like? I think that's something that we really need to start doing. On the sector side, I think there needs to be a little more self-confidence in indigenous approaches or trying new approaches because oftentimes I find that people do something because it's been done in that way in the Netherlands without asking whether that particular model is relevant for this completely different landscape with completely different culture, ecosystems, all of that. And but somehow because the equations, the models, the consultancies have all been trained in a particular way of thinking, it's kind of replication of template. So what would it take then for us to start completely developing new models and they could be new models that we learn from each other, but how do you have start more bottom up ideation? And I think that requires creation of self-confidence of people to say, no, we understand this works, it's a whole system, we've understood all pieces of it and it's as robust a system as something that we've imported from the West. So I think those are my three points I'll stop there. Thank you, Veena and thank you, Hank as well. And also thank you to all the participants who have already shared and also reflected on what to stop doing, do more of and start doing. And I think as we continue that discussion we'll get more specific. It struck me that Katarine was saying that it's important to connect closely to people. And if we talk about silos divides a lack of cooperation then clearly that process of making change and Veena was just mentioning this with the importance of listening. And Wambui also said that from the African Development Bank is that we need to think about to bridge those two fights how do we actually connect better with each other so that the door opens to collaborate? Because it's one thing to say that we work in silos and we all know that that happens a lot but it's another way to stop doing that and replace that by something better. So today we want to look at those ways of how to make such changes happen. Maybe through policies, rules, procedures but they tend to take a long time and are often resisted. Maybe today is a time to also consider a more personal approach for each of us within our organizations, our projects, our teams. Again, like Wambui was saying and even individually. So consider this word connect and that we need to have a good connection that builds trust before we are able to collaborate. And there I would like to go and get to Hank with a follow-up question, Hank, if I may. In your keynote, you shared about work that is going on in three cities. And in these three cities on the way to more resilience and from the water angle, you showed us a kind of model of concentric circles where it seems that all stakeholders are working together at the same time which with our traditional models that's a really hard thing to get going. And I was wondering how that is connected with your statement of that we should invest millions in people before the investment of the new billions in better infrastructure, more integration and so on. Can you tell us about such examples and what you're cooking there in those three cities is that, does that give us some lessons, some opportunities to influence change faster than before which is what we're looking at in this symposium? Thanks, Walter, but also thanks, Vina, for inspiring examples as well. I hope so, of course. Water as Leverage is a program we set up to exactly bridge some of the gaps we're discussing now. The gaps in, there's a lack of investment in people in the process and in an enabling environment. There's a lack in, because of a siloed approach in integration, there's a lack of opportunities that help catalyze sustainable action and climate action. So Water as Leverage is aimed at it. And with that, I will build on some of the things that have been said, but also what you said about the trust, I think one part is that we know there are many different interests and needs. We know not only from a sectoral perspective, environmental, social, economic and cultural, but also really from personal, individual and institutional perspective. Everybody has something else. So often if we bring needs and interests together, we turn into negotiate the processes. And then you come home and your daughter asks you and said, oh, what did you do today? Well, I negotiated and you say, oh, what did you get? Well, I lost 20%. I wanted this, but I had to give in something. And you take pride that you lost a bit, but you never take pride that you got something you never expected. But with a collaboration, instead of focusing on the loss, based on an assumption, what you want to get is that you bring something. You bring what you can bring and you bring what you can want. And in a collaboration, because needs and interests are so different. And if you create time and space to really organize investing in each other, instead of in something abstract as a vested interest, then you create the opportunity of exchange of the surprises. And I think this is what we build in with water as leverage is, and we call this in theory soft spaces or safe spaces, opportunities in an approach where people and organizations, you have to focus on both individuals as well as institutions, professional and non-professional, can come together and bring their stories, their narratives, their needs, their ideas, without immediately being judged or without immediately being cut off or without immediately being forced into a negotiation and give in. I think this is one. And then you not focus on what you don't want to lose, then you focus on what you can gain collectively, a common. So I actually don't think there's a, well, we have to reinvent the tragedy of the comments, but that is for a different book and a different story. With that come three parts, consistency, continuity and commitment. Because what we see and especially in the donor community around the world, so countries like the country I come from, but also many others and multilaterals as that they jump from pilot to project, from project to pilot to program to situation. And it means that you, oh, let's reinvent something here and then go to a next place and we go, so we island hop or pilot hop around the world. And that fragmentation is worse than the fragmentation in any place around the world. Worse than the fragmentation in a war zone or in conflict zone or in a disaster zone. So if we are not sticking to the promises we made in 2015 on the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, especially now in a post pandemic situation, we will lose everybody. So consistency in this approach, continuity in our efforts and commitment, skin in the game means sticking there. So I think creating that trust and build that comes with it. The second is empathy. We all talk about it. People, people, people. And it's easy. People make projects, not the other way around. Projects can kill people that is true and nature and culture and everything with it. But without the people, there's no project. So investing in the people, investing in an enabling environment, investing in the individuals, as well as in the institutions that come with it, create the opportunity to really develop the projects that make a difference. And then last, I think, and this goes to my point of, so the people is the million, you have to spend these millions. There's economic models that show that if you invest in the people, you maximize opportunities. If you maximize opportunities, those opportunities also have more added value. Create a better band for your buck, but also more environmental and more socially just outcomes. So it's not only an amazing inspiring way, it's also the best way to move. So then third, I think we are very good in the world. I said this already in being replicating the mistakes of the past. You could say this is non-responsive. This is the bulk of the funding goes to an amazing amount of programmatic approaches that are non-responsive in infrastructure, in our cities and our environment. Because of that, and because we were with less in the past, we really thought that was the future. And the interdependencies across SDGs, social, cultural, environmental, and economic were just not so apparent. But now we can't escape that anymore. So these non-responsive investment approaches expose our vulnerability every day. And that means we have disasters, a pandemic, a flood, a drought, a war, conflict, and so forth, migration everywhere. These challenges, these disasters make us respond. So we become, instead of proactive, reactive. So we look back all the time. We look at yesterday, next to a massive amount of investment in non-responsive approaches. We spend the rest of what we have in responding to the disasters of the past. And when we do this, we say we build back better. Often it is like a sliver better. It is still in response to the disasters of the past. So what do we have to do? We have to escape this non-responsive approach. We have to escape looking back and we have to become really proactive. And really proactive again means we have the agenda, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, the Paris Agreement. We have to invest in research better. We also have to invest in indigenous knowledge, local knowledge, in the capacity of people to ensure that proactive approaches really are going to make a difference. Thank you, Hank, for taking that full on and giving us more insights and perspectives on how to handle that. And before opening the floor more widely, but I don't have to open it because the discussion is already full speed going on in the chat. And Veena has already been responding to several questions asked of her there. Veena, I would like to ask you, you said we can't copy paste solutions from one place to the other. And the story that you have told us is very compelling about the conditions that you're working with in India. And my question would be, what new approaches do you see where new approaches are being piloted perhaps, but let's not use that word, introduced, innovated, and to bring those different actors that you mentioned together. And as Hank used the term soft space, a space where people could have some security, some safety to experiment, to innovate without being fired as you yourself said earlier on if you go too far too quickly, and where they can get out of hierarchies and connect and start to build relationships. Now in each country, this may work differently. And I'd love to hear some of your perspectives on how some of that might move forward in India. Yeah, I wanna make one quick point before I responded directly to that, which is to keep in mind that, when you have strong vested interests and you have that benefit from status quo, while anything that you're doing to reform, they are also responding and adapting to that situation. So it is a dynamic situation. It's not that everybody else stays the same and then you respond and nothing else changes. So I think it's important to realize that the situation on the ground is extremely dynamic and all actors are constantly adapting to everything that you do. So I think what then is needed is any proactive approach that Hank, the kind that Hank talked about, operational space, soft spaces and so on has to be structured and deliberative so that in advance it anticipates how all of the actors are going to possibly respond and then make sure that the outcome that you're going to get is already accounting for that and therefore the most desirable in terms of inclusion, in terms of transparency, in terms of all of that. So I just wanted to bring that point of it's a dynamic system, everybody's constantly adapting. Now the question you asked is, are there good examples of cases of the ground that could be, I'm not sure I have a perfect example of a program that does everything correct because that's kind of ambitious, but I think there's lots of small rays of hope. One example, and I think generally, I would like to say that putting the right information act in India is very, very important. It is constantly under threat and constantly being diluted at every point because for obvious reasons, but I think that it did make a massive, massive amount of change and empowering people to be able to access information about crucial infrastructure projects and so on. There's a lot of the Maharashtra Water Resources regulatory authority. There's a number of attempts that have been made to ensure that there's a specific place for public engagement and public hearings. A lot of that is one step forward, one step back in a lot of ways because they put in place civil society groups and NGOs kind of respond to occupy that space and then there's a lot of pushback from Western interests to then close down those pieces as well. One good example, which is not water sector as a whole, but in the case of Bangalore, for example, the city municipality created the space to allow citizen groups to sign memorandums of understanding with the municipality to take over and manage individual lakes within the city. I know this is very small, but it's been actually incredibly inspiring because a few of the lake groups are genuinely inclusive. They genuinely do very, very important roles of actually interagency coordination. They bring the agencies together, get them to speak to each other. They make sure that they're being inclusive and really act as watchdogs and kind of steering the infrastructure development in the direction that's appropriate. So I think there are small examples of glimmers of hope, but just to remember, it's always one step forward or half step or two steps forward, one step back, and that's something we should design. Right, right. So thank you, thank you, Veena, for giving us those insights and in those local groups who are doing an amazing job and are at the forefront. And I would imagine that those groups also involve what Antonella called young water solutions, bringing, she asked the question, and I think you did it too, who are in the room? When we talk about change and we have these discussions in the places where we work, who is in the room? And are we working with youth? Of course, the UN definition of youth is up to 35. Some say youth is a mindset, but what we miss out, and water sector, I think has been in the forefront of that, that younger people are often missing from the debate or they are put in their own debates, in their own groups. I spend half or more of my time working with emerging leaders and even at professionals, but also college students and even high school leaders. Antonella made this point very, very powerfully and I totally agree with it. So my question to all of you is, as we find opportunities to create change and we talk about those spaces that Hank mentioned, we look at new ways to invest in people so that we can do better infrastructure investments in a more integrated way. Then what's the role of young people? If I can just use that phrase, are they part of the dialogue? Are they at the heart of it? Or are we just seeing them as the future leaders? Which I always think, I don't think we can wait for future leaders, we need leaders now. And if we see leadership as influencing, then there is no need to wait a long time to involve people to do that influencing together. So as Hank said, we need more collective influencing. Vina echoed that. My question also to all of you is, shed some light on how emerging leaders, young water professionals which include, of course the millennials can be instrumental and use them more in bringing these changes about and creating these transition moments that Hank was alluding to and also Vina. So Hank, while we also look at the chat, Hank or Vina, a quick answer to that. Young people, how are you involving them in the three cities, Hank? How are young people involved? But one, what we tried, we involved them all over. We work on different levels, but what I found important also to not only do it, but also use institutional capacity for them. We have SDGs, they talk about gender and youth. So Waters Leverage was also a call to the market to join technical water experts, engineers, but also social scientists and so forth to join in this effort to define catalytic approaches. But what we asked in the call was very clear. One, your team has to be at least 50% female at all levels and the market responded and said, that's okay. You can ask and then they deliver. So it's not that hard. And second, make sure that you come up with an approach where you engage with the youth and they all do it differently, which is amazing, of course. In some teams, there are really school programs or more at university directed. Others have young groups in those cities. We have a board on Waters Leverage that is guiding our way forward and we have a representative of the Water Youth Network in that board. So I think on different levels and ways it is possible to want to stimulate teams and coalitions to think about this. And when they think about this, they just do it. It is that easy. And second to continue, and this is where again, this consistency in your approach is critically important to continue to drive these coalitions forward. And last, I think working across the world, this cannot be a tick the box thing. It is a cultural thing. So it is not, oh yeah, I have to think about youth. Or I'm sorry, I'm from Europe. I'm a 50 plus white male. I'm not female. I'm not from the global South. So it has to become my culture to think differently and really investing in people to understand that this is not about, okay, check the box and get over it. No too, that it is part of the culture that you do think inclusively. And that inclusion means really including and leaving no one behind. And therefore, I always take amazing inspiration of my mother who she passed away more than 10 years ago, but she was the one that was always really focusing about leaving no one behind. Never. First female school director post World War II activist with refugees across. She was this driving force and inspiration that drives me every day now is that even when I forget, I wake up and think, no, this has to be a cultural thing. They can never be a tick the box. This is not a policy. But on the other hand, it does help that we have SDGs. It does help that we have lists. And it does help that we challenge each other every day that we need to do this. And then amazing partnerships come up. And always, I always have this interesting thing is that we have all these social media things. And one of them is, for instance, LinkedIn, which is a crazy, because everybody can find you. And there's always every day, there's a massive list of questions by students, by young. I always try to answer them first, not. So look at how you deal with the promises you make and put them into practice. It's not easy, but you can do it. Thank you, Henk. Vina, we talk about involving emerging leaders, younger people. How does that play in the cases that you have described and what opportunities does that offer us? So I think technology is kind of the obvious way to involve youth because they have a clear advantage there. In Bangalore, there is a startup city. So there's a tremendous number of startups, all led by young people, doing amazing things. And I think creation and expansion of the spaces for what the young bring in. So I can give you a few quick examples. One of them is one of our group that we partner with has developed a low-cost smartphone-based sensor to test water quality. And they've just now figured out how to do it for Ecoli, which is pretty transformational, I think. So that's just anybody with a smartphone then now has the ability to test their local water quality. So that's transformational. Another example is apps. We have my own team that is developing an app for lakes in Bangalore to kind of spur citizen engagement. But it's much more thinking about gamification, thinking about really cool visualization. So my team is basically all under 35. I should say I'm the only one over 35 in my organization. And what they do and the way they think and how they've changed the way I see and what is possible has completely different because they use social media very effectively. They communicate with completely different tools than I have historically used. They don't read and write, but really amazing graphics, great TikTok videos, YouTube, animation, simulations that can be shown in apps. And so I think that actually if we don't actively create spaces, and it's like I said, easy thing to do because you just need to organize these challenges, funds, create these spaces where youth can then bring their talent in. And I think that will automatically create an engagement for youth in the sector. It's not being done enough. There's just a lot more that can be done as I'm learning from my young team. So. Thank you, Vina. Thank you, Vina. And Anna, I'm also calling on you to help select some questions. A lot of questions have already provoked discussion, brought about discussion in the chat. And some questions were answered. Vina was particularly quick on that. And there are some more that we can spend a few more minutes to answer as we go. Anna, any suggestions you want to come in? Sure, I think perhaps the easier way to go around it would be by sharing the screen and perhaps I can select the question itself. What do you think? Yep, let's do that. So I believe a few minutes ago, Jacqueline asked a question to Hen. Sorry, the chat keeps going up and down a little bit. Okay. Is that the question? Inclusion means not just giving opportunity to participate, but also building their capacity to participate? That's more like a comment. It was more about overcoming the repeating mistakes. Oh, right. What has already happened in the past and how to avoid happening them again and break these kind of cycles? Great. Over to Henk for a brief answer. We can catch up our questions. Yeah. This is a big challenge, yeah? You never overcome that you repeat mistakes. That would be, we have to try not. And I think one of the things again is this call for me for consistency, continuity and commitment and the learning. I think fragmentation in our institutions is one of the way that there is no historical capacity. I remember when I worked for the Obama task force and we had 23 federal agencies in one task force working together. And all of a sudden there was a conversation that one of the more seniors in the group said, oh, I remember 15 years ago, we did this. And I started to do interviews with a lot of the staff from the different agencies to say, okay, what did we learn from the past? And we all forgot. So one of the recommendations of the task force report was to institutionalize the learning and the evaluation of the process to make sure that you at least capture that learning to ensure that you can move forward. But there is a scare that the learning also shows exposes your vulnerability. And in a highly contested political environment showing vulnerability is not always easy. And then because we don't wanna be vulnerable all of a sudden we forget that we learn. So I think we always have to challenge from a professional perspective, a political bias that escapes from the learning because in the learning is also the assessment that we did think wrong. And that again builds also to your point how you made it on the right in the beginning and Vina touched upon is trust. If there's an environment of trust it's also more easily, learning comes more easy and then historical knowledge can be brought forward. But without that trust we shy away from the learning because we don't wanna acknowledge our mistakes. And if we don't wanna acknowledge our mistakes we'll forget about it it will make the mistakes over and over again. So I think this is this balancing act I talked about in my keynote yesterday as well is really about also balancing these different capacities. But I think from the places where I work and every time you've the trust of this trust is flourishing, people start to learn and open up and really talk about the mistakes they made. I think then you're really onto something that you have to grab and commit to. And it and again comes to my other point, stay continuity, commitment and consistency critically important for the trust even. I mean the trust goes, I often say trust comes by turtle and goes by horse. So you have really, because you know this you have to stay, even if something goes wrong. It's, I think the best experience is where it defaults. The best experience is if you look yourself in the mirror and say, oh, no, what did I do? Okay, now how do I go back to my people to, now I immediately, no escape, no delay acknowledge what you did wrong to learn and speed up faster. Right, yeah, thank you, Hank, for that perspective. And of course, if we are in a safe space, like you were suggesting can take place in some of these new projects that are being done in the three cities, in the sustainable, the resilient cities program. And maybe in the case that Vina mentioned the lakes in Bengaluru, then maybe that trusting space can allow such learning to take place. But if we are back in our hierarchical organization where admitting to mistakes is not really the thing to do because it might even open some liability, then that will be much harder. So just before we wrap up this discussion but we're not really wrapping it up what we have done this morning is to open the discussion to take what we learned and has inspired us in the keynotes in this symposium and start thinking about how is that going to influence our actions. And I would like to acknowledge all of you today, participants who have taken that at the different levels. A lot of comments I've seen and questions also about the more general sector or country level but there are also some at the organization team and individual level. And I would like to go back to the very first slide of the panel of experts that we had with us, William Moirwe from Uganda who said, we can change organizations around, it starts with a mindset, it starts with a dream, it starts with a vision that we create together that vision builds trust and then we can make changes happen. So we talked about who is in the room to do that. Where are those spaces where it's possible to have such conversations? Van Buys said leadership happens in conversations. If we want to make change happen, sometimes we have to change who is in the conversation, where is the conversation taking place to make that more effective. One thing that I noted that came out a lot is that this is actually about people. And to get people to work together, we need to connect and build trust that where trust was also mentioned several times and Hank made a distinction that I thought is helpful. Normally when we collaborate and when we plan collaboration, we think of it more as a negotiation with lots of formality and conditions and negotiations. But the examples that he shared with us of innovative work happening in countries where teams got together that are also gender balanced and hopefully have young people as well. And Veena said, my whole team is below 35. I'd like to come and visit Veena to see that energy and work. Those are often the best places to make change happen in my experience. So to get to that collaboration in our hierarchies, that's sometimes harder to do. So how can we change the setting? And how in particular can we organize projects to be catalyst of that new change and create transition moments? We talk about managing change and transition. So transition is kind of a shorter period in which you can give change a boost in the right direction and help it to get momentum. We also talked about that while individual leadership and learning new skills and leadership coaching and William Mojave said, it all starts with your mind. It's not the money that matters to start. It is what you want to do and what's your mindset. And he used a powerful example where when he was once resisting change, one of his staff said, if you can't do it for us, could you please change your mind? And that is the story he is now telling. So a lot of these changes we are talking about today go also back to our mindsets and I would like us to take, all of us to take this personally and not just say, well, it's somebody else's problem. Somebody should change and I can just analyze it and give comments about it. But this involves, I believe, change in all of us to become change agents and influencers in different roles that we can play. We need to do that because of one of the other keynote speakers Land Pritchett has told us that some of the older ways of capacity development really have not shown very good results. So we need to be self-critical. Hank has advised us about this whole generation of infrastructure investments that are now solutions in the past and we need something better to move forward in the challenging conditions that we are today. So we have comments and also thank you to all the participants. Thank you very much for the fruitful discussion. This is for this dialogue. If there's something that I think I would like to continue this dialogue is actually to get in touch with each of you and have a dialogue, which is still a little bit challenging in this format and it's something that we all also can learn to do better as well. But I would like to go back now to say also to Anna, Anna to explain how we are going to offer you the chance to keep this dialogue going after this session. So Anna, it's over to you and then I'll just quickly wrap it up after that. Yes, so I will make it easy explanation by sharing a slide prepared. So here you will also find this slide just above the chat. It's called Read Before Weminar and it includes how you're going to be able to engage and continue this discussion onto the conference platform itself. This webinar has been recorded since there was there's a few number, a great amount of participants that unfortunately cannot join online due to different time zones. So in the post itself, we encourage you to continue the discussion in comments and likes. This will be posted shortly after this webinar itself. I also invite you to tweet and interact in social media by making use of the hashtag capdev sim and invite you to contribute to the DAFTA agenda by the URL that you'll just find here below. And I'm giving back the stage to you, Walter. Thank you so much Anna and thank you for the IOC team to organize this for us and make this all possible. But especially to all of you participants for engaging in this discussion, this dialogue, opening the door to looking in a very concrete and may I add provocative way in a way that challenges us what really, what actions we can take to do things better, to scale up where possible to spend that attention, the empathy, the person to person time that Hank and Veena talked about that will make this change happen. The worst possible thing that could happen, I guess would be that we take change as an academic subject and we have this symposium and we discuss about it but then nothing really much happens concretely in our organizations, in our personal work, in our teams after this. So I personally would want to see and be part of that to see the change actually happening resulting from the dialogues that we have today and then we keep sharing about the experiences we gain. I would like to thank very warmly Hank and Veena for sharing their personal stories, their convictions, you could hear their passion shine through as well as well as their experience of how to make things happen with people with on the ground in cities. Veena in Bengaluru, India and India such a universe in itself. She will be talking in her keynote about more examples in India that are very inspiring and that also have a long history as well with dams of 2000 years ago and Hank who's from his position is able to check in and see exciting changes around the world and putting that together for us and giving us advice and insights on how to look at things differently. Sometimes it takes different glasses to look at so that we can also then make changes happen. So a warm thanks to Veena and Hank and to all the other panelists we had to William Moharowe, Antonella, Vamui and Veena of course being with us today. So I am Walter joining you from Manila. We actually had a little earthquake during our discussion today. I got the alert message that we live in a world where things keep moving even the earth and that should can prompt us to more. So with that I would like to thank everyone for making this session happen. Open the door, let's continue the discussion and I want to be part of that. I would have liked to be able to enter also into more discussion and I hope to do that after this session. So please also do reach out to me in any way I can help. Thank you very much to all of you and hand back to Anna to close our session. Yes, so we'll be down now.