Bolivia: Refresher Seminar on Small Water Supply and Sanitation

 

The refresher course ” Small Water Supply and Sanitation: Serving the disadvantaged communities in semi-urban and rural areas in developing countries” targeted 20 IHE Delft alumni from Central and South American countries and also 5 local professionals. Participants of this course are professionals (from the region) that are involved in Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) for cities, peri-urban, small towns, slum areas and rural areas. This course is aimed at updating their knowledge with state-of-the-art technologies and practices in the field of small WSS and to highlight its potential in the current and future efforts to improve the livelihood of disadvantaged communities.

Recently there has been a resurgence of small-scale and decentralized systems for WSS. A number of innovative, robust, technologies that use locally available resources. They have shown success in terms of providing safe drinking water and acceptable sanitation with considerable improvement in health and environmental impacts. Moreover, new approach of decentralized (local) governance of WSS are believed to play key role in providing sustainable services.

This refresher course discussed new approaches and challenges of emerging systems and it enabled the professionals in these practices update their knowledge and come abreast of the new developments. It also provided a platform/network for sharing experiences of professionals from the Central and South America as well as other regions.

Sponsor: NUFFIC
Budget: 75k euros
Date: 19-24 September, 2011
Location: Cochabamba, Bolivia
IHE staff: Dr. Sergio Salinas, Dr. Mariska Ronteltap
Partners: Fernando Ledezma, Ana Maria Romero