Aug. 31, 2013 – 17th Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) Meeting!!!

Celebration of the past and present, while strategising for the future of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) on 31 August

Be part of one of the most vibrant Alliances in the sanitation sector and participate in the 17th SuSanA meeting being held in Stockholm on the Saturday before the World Water Week 2013. 

The 17th SuSanA meeting is open to all who believe in sustainable sanitation solutions and the systems approach to sanitation. This year’s SuSanA meeting in Stockholm will be a celebration of achievements of SuSanA and its members and partner organisations, in particular of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize Laureate, Dr Peter Morgan, who will be attending the meeting for a few hours.

Another achievement to be celebrated is the recognition by the UN of the World Toilet day, started by the WTO in 2001, which is one of the founding organisations of SuSanA. With respect to the future, we will be having stimulating yet maybe controversial discussions about future initiatives, opportunity areas and ways in which SuSanA can be used effectively by its members to support their work in the sanitation sector.

• Register now to take part in the 17th SuSanA meeting on 31st August which is being hosted by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the SuSanA secretariat.
•  Please see the latest agenda and registration form. Registration is free, as are all the resources  on the SuSanA platform.

Online forum discusses Gates Foundation sanitation grants

Milestone reached – 50 grants showcased on online discussion forum as part of sanitation project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Source: SEI News, July 5, 2013 |

Photo: Lab reactor for biogas production using low cost nanoparticles (Universitat Aut​ònoma de Barcelona).

Sanitation experts and enthusiasts around the world from the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance with the assistance of a team from Stockholm Environment Institute are openly discussing the outcomes and progress of the Gates Foundation’s sanitation science and technology grants. After 6 months of the project just over half of the 83 sanitation research grants made by the Foundation have been introduced and discussed on the SuSanA Discussion Forum. The Forum, hosted by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), has seen an increase in activity since the grant holders were invited to contribute information and participate in discussions organised into 5 thematic topics:

• Resource recovery from excreta or faecal sludge
• Processing technologies for excreta or faecal sludge
• User interface
• Faecal sludge transport
• Enabling environment and others

Videos and more from the vibrant Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) meeting during Stockholm World Water week

Sustainable sanitation experts and enthusiast gathered at the SuSanA meeting in Stockholm two weeks ago where they exchanged experiences from their global programmes, networked and begun conversations about future collaboration. The meeting material, which includes videos of the presentations, powerpoint presentations for download and photos are now available online. 

• The meeting page - Links to all the presentations, the videos and the photos from the meeting

Moreover be aware of the vibrant discussions that are taking place on the SuSanA forum that have resulted out of the meeting two weeks ago.

• About the meeting here.
• A new initiative by working group 5 here.
• The drafting of a mission statement for SuSanA here.
• Discussion on SuSanA partner mapping here.
• Discussion on the post-2015 indicators for sanitation here.

Feel free to take part in the discussion and become part of the SuSanA community.

Sustainable sanitation experts meet at the SWWW, 31 Aug and 1 Sept

Experts and supporters of sustainable sanitation will be gathering at the end of the Stockholm World Water Week (SWWW) on Friday 31 August and Saturday 1 September 2012 for the 16th Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) meeting. 

The agenda of these 1 ½ days is filled with an impressive selection of speakers from around the globe who will share their experiences in sustainable sanitation and how it can find its place in the mainstream sanitation debates.

If you would like to gain insights into what is being done in the sustainable sanitation sector by organisations like SEI, JICA, GIZ, ACRA, ANESVBI, CAWST, WRC, Plan International USA and WSA, and if you want to discuss future activities and focus areas of SuSanA then you should join us at this SuSanA meeting in Stockholm. The meeting on Friday afternoon will be held at the SWWW venue and on Saturday the meeting will be hosted by SEI.

• Please visit our website to see the latest agenda, list of speakers and to register (free of charge).

Sustainable Sanitation Alliance presence at Africa Water Week

SuSanA is co-convening Session 7 entitled “Sustainable sanitation and the role of hygiene in the value chain” of Sub-theme 1 (“Water and Sanitation for Development”) and is convening two side events: “Inspired by SuSanA: Development partners strengthen their focus on sustainable sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa – the example of Germany and Japan” and “Closing the gaps: Building up capacities and creating enabling environment for sustainable sanitation and water management in Africa“. SuSanA will also have an exhibition booth in the exhibition area (SuSanA partners can display their materials at this booth).

• The detailed program of Session 7 and the two SuSanA side events is now available online.

SuSanA – Compilation of 13 factsheets on key sustainable sanitation topics

Compilation of 13 factsheets on key sustainable sanitation topics, 2012.

• Link to download publication

This factsheet book is a compilation of 13 thematic factsheets which were produced by the eleven SuSanA working groups. What makes these factsheets special is that they are multi-authored by people from different organisations and by free-lance consultants. The factsheets were developed in a long process involving many discussions and review loops which were mostly carried out in public, e.g. at working group meetings, with the working group mailing lists or, since July 2011, also in the open SuSanA discussion forum (http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/6-susana-working-groups).

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary

WG 1: Capacity development
Capacity development for sustainable sanitation
Spuhler, D., McCreary, C., Fogde, M., Jenssen, P.

WG 2: Finance and economics
Financial and economic analysis
Parkinson, J., Hutton, G., Pfeiffer, V., Blume, S., Feiereisen, P.

SuSanA is now five years old and still going strong!

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) celebrates this week its 5th anniversarysince its formation at the kick-off meeting in Eschborn, Germany on 29 January 2007. Looking back we can all be proud of what we have achieved together. Therefore the SuSanA secretariat wants to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their cooperation, dedication, support and interest to work as a network on a common vision of sustainable sanitation.

A brief overview of the achievements in the past five years: SuSanA has grown to be a diverse network with 172 international partner organisations and more than 1100 individual members working together in 11 working groups. So far 14 SuSanA meetings have been held in nine different countries around the globe to provide a platform to discuss, exchange experiences and work together. The SuSanA website (www.susana.org) has become a vibrant tool for knowledge exchange, capacity development and communication within and outside the network, with typically 7500 hits per month. Many excellent publications from the working groups, partners and members have emerged from a joint effort to show viable avenues to solve the sanitation crisis in the world. The SuSanA Library contains already over 1100 publications and it continues to grow.

SuSanA activities have instigated dialogue in many developing countries and countries in transition amongst the governing authorities and local and international sanitation experts. The concept of sustainable sanitation promoted by SuSanA is today well known to most decision makers. In 2008 for instance, the Indian Prime Minister mentioned in his inaugural speech at the Third SACOSAN conference: “New technologies have to be affordable and sustainable” while speaking about the reuse and recycling options in sanitation and wastewater management. The NGO CAPS (Center for Advanced Philippine Studies) in the Philippines developed the “Sustainable Sanitation Framework” based on SuSanA’s definition of sustainable sanitation which was adopted by the Philippines’ government to formulate the “Sustainable Sanitation Roadmap”. For more information please refer to Dan Lapid’s presentation at the Stockholm World Water Week last year.

Harnessing the wisdom of crowds – Open discussion forum helps to answer many sanitation related questions

The idea for this open discussion forum on sanitation came from our experience that when you want to buy a new car or have a question about your baby’s teeth: where do you get advice from? You put your question into a search engine like Google and you end up reading other people’s postings on a discussion forum. Usually, those questions and answers prove to be very helpful.

The same mechanism can hold true for a discussion forum on sanitation issues. This is why the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) secretariat developed a new discussion forum which was launched in July 2011. The forum is open –  as opposed to some existing closed fora which require a login even just for reading. Today, the SuSanA forum already has 930 registered users, 40 topics, nearly 1000 views for the most popular topics, and some topics have attracted up to 20 replies.

All postings are readable by everyone and searchable by search engines like Google and Yahoo. A broad range of topics are covered such as sanitation systems and technologies, health and hygiene, CLTS, school sanitation, sanitation systems for special conditions, menstrual hygiene management, SuSanA working groups and announcements and many more.

All registered users can contribute to the forum by creating new discussion topics or by responding to the posts of others. The option to create a user profile, including a passport-style photo, is available. The user can also attach additional documents and photos to his or her posts.

For people who like to receive postings via e-mail, it is also possible to subscribe to a daily e-mail alert service of new posts simply by leaving your e-mail address here. Alternatively or in addition, one can subscribe to specific categories or topics after logging in and thereby follow specific discussions.

Here are four examples of very active discussion threads so far:

• Faecal sludge management;
• Mobile sanitation systems like peepoo bags in Kenya or a new urine diversion toilet pot in Bangladesh;
• Menstrual Hygiene Management, including the Ruby Cup business idea in Kenya;
• Progress of SuSanA working groups:

To view the discussion forum or to obtain your own login for writing on the forum, please click here.

For further information or questions please contact the SuSanA secretariat (susana@giz.de)

Two new SuSanA factsheets printed: Schools and Operation & Maintenance

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) has published two new 8-page factsheets:

• Abraham, B., Fogde, M., Muench, E., Wendland, C. (2011). Sustainable sanitation for schools – Factsheet of Working Group 7. Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA).
• Muellegger, E., Freiberger, E., McConville, J., Samwel, M., Rieck, C., Scott, P., Langergraber, G. (2011). Operation and maintenance of sustainable sanitation systems – Factsheet of Working Group 10. Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA).

SuSanA case studies on urban/peri-urban sanitation

Below are links to selected SuSanA case studies:

- UDD toilets with reuse in allotment gardens, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines (PDF)

- Constructed wetland for a peri-urban housing area, Bayawan City, Philippines (PDF) – Draft version

- Blackwater and greywater reuse system Chorrillos, Lima, Peru (PDF)

- Use of reclaimed wastewater in agriculture Jordan Valley, Jordan (PDF)

- Co-composting of faecal sludge & organic solid waste, Kumasi, Ghana (PDF) – draft

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More information resources are on the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance website