Further co-funding support for the SuSanA Discussion Forum

On the 3rd anniversary of the SuSanA Discussion Forum, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) is pleased to announce that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given a follow-up grant to SEI for “Extension of the SuSanA Discussion Forum”, thereby supporting online knowledge management, dissemination and peer discussions of the Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene projects. The size of the grant is 250,000 USD and it will span a period of 18 months, starting in July 2014.

The project leader for this grant is Dr. Arno Rosemarin who also led the successful Phase 1 of the same project which ran from November 2012 to April 2014 with a grant size of 233,000 USD. In both phases of this work the focus is to encourage grantees of the Gates Foundation to share and discuss results from their sanitation research grants on the open Discussion Forum of SuSanA – the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance, a network of 231 partner organisations and 3800 individual members. Results from Phase 1, which was carried out together with the Swiss consulting firm seecon international gmbh in close cooperation with the SuSanA secretariat at Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH can be accessed via the research page of the SuSanA website  . Further outputs from Phase 1 were seven webinars recorded with sanitation grantees and SuSanA members, as well as videos of interviews with grantees at the “Reinvent the Toilet Fair” in Delhi, India in March 2014.

Phase 2 of this project is aimed at increasing the level of awareness, knowledge dissemination and sharing of research and implementation results in the areas of sanitation science and technology, urban sanitation businesses, demand creation, policy and advocacy. It will contribute to the knowledge management and dissemination that the Gates Foundation is carrying out for its many innovative sanitation and hygiene projects.

The activities of the grant are clustered to support the following three main outputs:

1. Make the SuSanA Discussion Forum a highly accessible, comprehensive and authoritative workplace for the water, sanitation & hygiene community around the world.
2. Ensure that the kernels of knowledge arising from the many innovative projects funded by the Gates Foundation’s Water, Sanitation & Hygiene strategy are put into the hands of the professional community with the aim to disseminate and implement.
3. Catalyze communication among professionals within the community in order to enhance learning and exchange of experience.

We are proud of the fact that all the work that SuSanA members and the SuSanA secretariat have collectively put into this network since 2007, and into the Discussion Forum since 2011, is being recognised in this way by an important actor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

For further information please consult the SuSanA Discussion Forum over the coming weeks or contact Dr. Arno Rosemarin ( [email protected] ) or Dr. Elisabeth von Muench ( [email protected] ) who will again support the SEI team for this project and act as a community manager. You are also invited to involve yourself personally by expressing your views or sharing your sanitation experiences on the Discussion Forum: www.forum.susana.org.

The Stockholm Environment Institute is BMGF Grant Holder:  OPP1111498

Visit website: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/
Grants-Database/Grants/2014/07/OPP1111498