All systems go! Programme Overview

All systems go! will feature five Thematic Areas powered by sector expert Thematic Leads who will ensure that the symposium's sessions are relevant and comprehensive. 

OVERALL SYMPOSIUM FOCUS: Using and adapting systems approaches for real impact. Learning from WASH and beyond.

THEMATIC AREA 1: Understanding the systemic shifts necessary for sustained demand, provision and use of sanitation and hygiene services.

THEMATIC AREA 2: Systemic approaches to increasing safety and sustainability of drinking water service delivery.

THEMATIC AREA 3: Financing WASH: a systems approach.

THEMATIC AREA 4: Systems building in fragile states: understanding risks and opportunities for systems strengthening in a rapidly changing environment.

THEMATIC AREA 5: Measuring and learning about the WASH system and its strength.

All systems go! will bring together experts and professionals from all sectors. The three-day event will be rich in content and strong in engagement. It aims to capture the energy around proven strategies and latest innovations, translating them into inspiring sessions and activities.

Each day will have its own focus and rich mix of sessions drawing from the five thematic areas outlined above. Panel discussions and plenaries, smaller parallel and participatory sessions and skills-building workshops will all serve to further support one of three overall daily focuses:

The focus for Day 1 is "Discover & Provoke" to set the scene and frame the discussion around WASH systems.
Day 2 is "Engage, Create & Collaborate" which explores solutions and developments from sectors beyond WASH.
The focus for Day 3 is "Deliver & Do". This brings it all together. Using all the knowledge gained in the sessions to plan actions and practical tools towards a shared agenda.

Meet the experts responsible for crafting the symposium's rich and innovative content:

Angela Huston joined IRC as a Programme Officer in the International and Innovation Programme in November 2016. Her work is centred around the monitoring and sanitation portfolios, primarily in Africa. She is a significant contributor to the research and methodological development of the IRC WASH Systems strengthening approach and the planning, monitoring, and learning group. Angela is a lifelong water resource and environmental advocate who transitioned into the WASH sector after an extended period living among economic water scarcity inspired her to take a more human-centred approach to sustainable development.

Angela has a B.Sc. in Environmental Chemistry, an M.Sc. in Civil Engineering, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. that uses systems thinking to explore the viability of WASH programmes and services. She is experienced in dialogue facilitation and arts-based methods that invite people from all backgrounds to engage as active members in civil society and problem solving.

THEMATIC AREA: OVERALL SYMPOSIUM FOCUS

Stef Smits is the Head of IRC Consult and coordinator of IRC's country programme in Honduras, and of IRC's other work in Latin America. As such, most of his work experience is in countries in that region, particularly Honduras, Colombia and Bolivia. In addition, he has most experience in Southern Africa and India.

Thematically, his work focuses on the sustainability of rural water supplies and particularly on the institutional arrangements for supporting community-based service providers, and the costs of that. He has also been working on the linkages between WASH services provision and local-level IWRM. His particular attention goes out to multiple-use services, or the provision of water for both domestic and productive uses at household level.

THEMATIC AREA: OVERALL SYMPOSIUM FOCUS

Erick Baetings holds a master's degree (MSc) in Water and Environmental Management for Developing Countries from the University of Technology, Loughborough, England. He has worked for more than 30 years in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector and gained extensive working and living experience in Nepal and Bhutan (14 years), Zambia (four years) and Lao People's Democratic Republic (four years). Since his return to the Netherlands he has travelled regularly for short assignments to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Vietnam in Asia, and Ethiopia in Africa.

Erick is a sanitation expert with rural and urban experience in developing result monitoring frameworks, facilitating sector learning, developing rapid assessment tools and applying these for sanitation related research (e.g. supply and demand studies and urban faecal waste flow assessments). He is currently working on a new results framework for the Global Sanitation Fund and developing an action research framework for the USAID Transform WASH programme in Ethiopia. His work to further develop the faecal waste flow calculator to assess and map urban faecal waste flows and associated practices is continuing.

THEMATIC AREA: SANITATION AND HYGIENE SERVICES

Dr. Christoph Lüthi is an urban infrastructure planner with over 25 years of experience in planning and design of urban infrastructure in middle and low-income countries. He has a Master's Degree in Urban Development Planning from the University College of London (UCL), and a PhD in Urban Planning & Engineering from the TU Berlin. He has worked on urban planning and basic urban service provision in several African and Asian countries.

In 2005 he joined Sandec as Leader of the Strategic Environmental Sanitation Planning Group. At Sandec he works on state-of-the-art planning tools and frameworks such as Sanitation 21 or CLUES: Community-Led Urban Environmental Sanitation. Since 2015 he heads the research department for Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development (Sandec).

THEMATIC AREA: SANITATION AND HYGIENE SERVICES

Ruchika Shiva has been working with IRC for over a year, presently she working in the capacity of a Country Coordinator for India. She is involved in initiating and managing partnerships, conceptualizing projects with partners to develop the India Country Programme of IRC. She is also presently involved in the Community Water Plus project and the sanitation assessment of the Nashik Kumbh Mela.

Prior to IRC, Ruchika has worked with the India Chapter of Plan International for seven years in varied capacities. She played a crucial role in managing programmes in Bikaner (Rajasthan) and urban slums in Delhi. She actively managed grants from international donors specifically on School WASH in 7 states (Uttarkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh). Ruchika, in the early stages of her career, has also worked with grassroots organizations focusing on children in difficult circumstances.

THEMATIC AREA: SANITATION HYGIENE SERVICES

Ranjiv Khush is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Aquaya Institute (Aquaya), an international non-profit research and consulting organization. Aquaya is dedicated to to building an evidence-base that improves the effectiveness of water and sanitation development efforts in low-resource settings.

Aquaya's Monitoring for Safe Water initiative, currently funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, builds local capacity for water quality monitoring across sub-Saharan Africa. Under the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships for Learning and Sustainability (WASHPaLS) program, which is funded by USAID and managed by Tetra Tech, Aquaya is evaluating rural sanitation improvement efforts in Asia and Africa. Aquaya is also studying urban sanitation economics through research assignments with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). To promote the development of African water and sanitation researchers, Aquaya has established the AquayaLEARN fellowship program for graduate students.

THEMATIC AREA: DRINKING WATER SERVICE DELIVERY

Catarina Fonseca, IRC Head Innovation and International Department, is an economist with 21 years of experience in development cooperation and 18 in the water supply and sanitation sector. She has pioneered sector development on the understanding of life-cycle costs and financing. She is part of the IRC management team, is Head of the International and Innovation Programme of IRC and is the Watershed: empowering citizens Director. Catarina has a passion for evidence and data in support of good governance (acknowledging it's a tough call).

Before IRC, Catarina worked with a Portuguese NGO on participatory approaches in urban slums with a gender and equity emphasis. Catarina holds a PhD in Water Sciences (Cranfield University, UK), a MAs in Development Studies specialised in agriculture and rural development (International Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands) and was originally trained as an Economist (MSs, Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Technical University, Portugal).

THEMATIC AREA: FINANCING WASH

David De Armey, Director of International Partnerships at Water for Good, has been overseeing the organization's relationships within the water sector network in the Central African Republic (CAR). David has provided leadership in advocating for improvements in the norms and directives that govern the water sector in CAR. He has also established coordination and communication systems to increase data availability for all WASH sector and WASH cluster members at a national level.

After joining Water for Good five years ago, David completed a Master of Science in Management for Sustainable Development in Dublin, Ireland, with his research thesis focused on supply chains and governance in rural Central African Republic. Water for Good has been working exclusively in the Central African Republic since 2004 with a strong focus on the development of a circuit rider maintenance model since then, collecting maintenance, spare parts, and community data electronically for the past 7 years.

THEMATIC AREA: FRAGILE STATES

Kate Neely is a researcher in the Melbourne School of Government. Kate is working on understanding research translation/mobilization practices and policy.

She has qualifications in Chemistry, Biology, Adult Education, International Development and Sociology and has worked as an educator and researcher in the Kingdom of Tonga, Timor Leste and the Northern Territory of Australia.

Her doctoral research was based in Timor Leste and applied Complex Adaptive Systems theory in order to understand the robustness (or otherwise) of spring fed water systems. 

THEMATIC AREA: MEASURING AND LEARNING

Heather Skilling is the Principal Global Practice Specialist for WASH with DAI and a Consultant to the World Bank Global Water Practice.

She is an economist with more than 30 years of experience in strengthening water and sanitation service delivery in developing countries including serving as Senior Water and Sanitation Advisor with the Water Office of USAID.

Recent work includes analysis with WaterAid UK of the ways in which donors are monitoring and measuring systems' change in WASH.

THEMATIC AREA: MEASURING AND LEARNING

Jeffrey Walters joined the engineering department in 2018 as an assistant professor of civil engineering. Jeffrey's passion and calling in research and teaching focus on the application of engineering techniques and systems modeling approaches for sustainable infrastructure in developing world contexts.

In the two years before arriving at George Fox, he served as a technical expert for USAID's Sustainable Wash Systems Learning Partnership, a consortium dedicated to applying, researching and learning about systems-based approaches to improving the sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene services around the world. He also worked abroad for three years as an assistant professor at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, where he won his department's Teacher of the Year award in 2017.

THEMATIC AREA: MEASURING AND LEARNING