This year again Water Youth Network (WYN) will be at the World Water Week in Stockholm (from 27 to 31 August). The team is smaller compared to previous years but is a very enthusiastic one. WYN will join about 3000+ global water professionals, who will be attending this year’s Water Week.
We have multiple objectives for our participation this time around. As the youth voice of the water sector, WYN plans to use the forum to exchange ideas, strengthen its partnerships, showcase youth practices and foremost get exposed to the developments taking place in the sector.
Photo: Water Youth Network members with the winner of the WYN Booth Contest at Stockholm World Water Week 2015
Below is a quick brief of our activities during the week:
Sunday (27 August from 09:00 to 10:30): Corresponding to this year’s theme of “water and waste – reduce and reuse”, we will be co-organizing a session on the above topic together with SIWI and World Youth Parliament for Water. The session will focus on showcasing some of today’s most promising water and waste reduce/reuse solutions and discuss strategies to overcome the challenges faced by youth in implementing these. Please see the full program of our session here. The same day, we will also be at the Young professionals mingle scheduled from 18:00 to 21:00.
Monday (28 August from 09:00 to 17:30): We will be hosting a booth on Monday. At the booth, we plan to: Meet and greet (of course!), Engage visitors in interactive activities/games (Surprise!) linked to the theme of the Water Week, Update visitors on all that we have been up to in the past one year. Special feature: Know all about our YouKnoW project! YouKnoW is Youth Driven Knowledge on Water. We are everyday updating an online map connecting youth water projects and youth organisations from all over the world.
Tuesday (29 August from 16:00 to 17:30): On this day, we will be supporting a session on ‘Valuing Water: towards common principles and political enthusiasm’. The session is designed around the High Level Panel on Water HLPW’s cross cutting project on Valuing Water. It will have an open debate on the values of water and the way to value water in/for decision making. Input from the session will feed into informing the principles drafted by a group of experts, which are also currently open for Public Consultation. You are invited to provide feedback and share any insights/projects you have linked to Value of Water, in the broadest sense of the word. More details on the session can be found here.
For the rest of the week, Water Youth Network plans to attend informative sessions, catch-up with existing partners and network with new ones. There are two important informal meetings planned that WYN will attend: first one is linked to WYN’s participation in the thematic commission/process of the World Water Forum 8. The second one is connected to the Global Water Partnership’s Youth for Water and Climate Initiative that WYN is part of. The initiative is currently inviting youth organisations and other partners to join the initiative by signing this declaration.
If you would like to meet up with us or would like to know more about our work, please join us for our session (on Sunday) or visit our booth (on Monday). We look forward to see you!
