Last ten years Wetskills Foundation organized 45 two-week Wetskills Challenge events (pressure-cooker program for young talents (student & Young Professionals) with a passion for water, climate and sustainability) in 23 different countries worldwide. Diverse and inclusive teams of young international talents (more than 850 Alumni) with different backgrounds co-created inspiring out-of-the-box ideas for more than 200 cases on a water, climate and sustainability, contributing to the SDGs and thus a better world.
Inspiring Wetskills Practices for Climate Adaptation, stimulating the Intergenerational Dialogue
During CAS2021, Wetskills Foundation and some of its Alumni have presented and discussed some inspiring out-of-the-box ideas with focus on Climate Adaptation and the role of water. Representatives from over the world of the teams that co-created these ideas presented the ideas in two-minutes pitches (cases and alumni from Bangladesh, Lesotho, South Africa, South Korea, The Netherlands, India, Israel and Romania). Three recognized experts in the field of Climate Change and water, Liz van Duin (Ministery of Infrastructure and Water Management of The Netherlands), Saleemul Huq (International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Bangladesh) and Monika Weber-Fahr (Worldbank) reflected on the ideas and the importance of intergenerational dialogue. In conclusion, Wetskills Alumni participants provide their experiences on co-creation working together across generations.
In reflection
Johan Oost, Managing Director Wetskills Foundation, looks back at a successful event: “Looking at the Wetskills contributions to the CAS-21 Water Action Track (Inspiring Wetskills Practices), the digital world provides Wetskills Foundation a lot more opportunities to stay in touch with its community and making use of the outcomes and results of previous events. Wetskills has a large variety of Alumni from all corners of the world and the same goes for the out-of-the-box ideas by the teams.
It is rather easy to ask alumni for online small contributions, like a short video clip, make a prerecorded pitch, defending ideas or short interviews and keynotes. In the real world, alumni should travel to a certain location first. This re-meeting after a certain time is good to hear where alumni are working, how they look back on the Wetskills time and potential cooperation in the future. It even can stimulate previous discussions of idea implementation to maske these more active!
Wetskills Foundation aims to maintain its extensive community of alumni and professionals. The digital world will help maintaining the contacts and stimulate the promotion and communication about Wetskills when using previous experiences and ideas.”
W@tskills-India 2021: Finals & Awarding
From 2-13 January 28 participants from India and various other countries joined the online Wetskills Challenge in India. This prerecorded contribution displays the Finals and Awarding, where the teams pitch the out-of-the-box ideas to an international jury panel. Keynote addresses: Adriana Valenzuela Jimenez (Youth Leadership at Global Center on Adaptation) and Bharat Jain (Gujarat Cleaner Production Centre).
The Water Action Hub requested Wetskills Foundation with its Indian partner Centre for Environment Education to organize this event and bring-in young talents with their concreate ideas for real-life cases in India to foster the intergenerational dialogue for Water & Climate Adaptation.
This first fully online (corona-adaptive) ‘W@tskills’ was the fifth Wetskills event in India, after events in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Kerala. Last 10 years Wetskills Foundation organized 46 two-week Wetskills Challenge events (for young talents with a passion for water, climate and sustainability) in 23 different countries worldwide. Diverse and inclusive teams of young international talents (almost 900 Alumni) with different backgrounds co-created inspiring out-of-the-box ideas for more than 200 cases on water, climate and sustainability, contributing to the SDGs and thus a better world.
Next W@tskills events
First half year Wetskills Foundation will organise 2-3 online W@tskills events. One will start with the focus on South(era) Africa at the end of this month. In May, Wetskills will organise W@tskills-Latin America, focussing on combining more countries in this region with cases and participants. Besides, and if possible, because of corona, there will be live events in April and May: Hungary (April 18-30), Danmark (May 3-15) and Romania (May 14-26). If you want to contribute as Case Owner, Expert of Participant, please send Johan Oost an email.
More information: www.wetskills.com, @Wetskills (Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin and Facebook) or info@wetskills.com.
