Past and future conferences/event

Financing Water Services for the Poor, September 23, 2002-March 22, 2003.
www.worldwaterforum.net
Organized by the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council, and moderated by James Winpenny and Daniel Valensuela, this e-conference was part of the Third World Water Forum's Virtual Water Forum. The focus was threefold:

• To create an enabling environment for financing the water sector
• To finance water for people
• To finance water for food

A background paper to the virtual forum can be found at http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/download/VWF-finance-background.pdf
For additional information contact James Lanahan at James_Lanahan@sida.se.

E-conference on scaling up community management of rural water supplies: "Beyond the Community". 3 June - 12 July 2002 . IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) in cooperation with WaterAid, PLAN, WEDC and SKAT.
http://www.irc.nl/manage/debate/econf.html
This conference looked at management of water and sanitation services at a community level, with an intention to share ideas, identify mechanisms to scale up community management in rural areas, to identify obstacles to scaling up, and to identify good and bad practices. The conference website hosts summaries of all six weeks of dialogue, along with a background paper explaining the major issues facing scaling up rural community water systems, including cost recovery.

International Conference on Water and Sanitation Services in SmallTowns and Multi-Village Schemes. June 11-15, 2002. Water and Sanitation Programme, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This conference considered the unique challenges of providing water and sanitation services in small towns, which have different characteristics than urban or rural areas. The Water and Sanitation Program's SmallTowns and Multi-Village Systems Initiative conducted a series of studies on small towns, including management options, financing opportunities, methods for cost-effective project design, etc. over the last few years. This conference's objectives were to share experience among specialists, while reviewing the findings of the Initiative, and launch a second stage of development, which is expected to develop tools for application and other research.

World Bank Institute Workshop for Journalists. March 25-29, 2002 . Johannesburg , South Africa .
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/sdwatermedianetwork/africa.html
This workshop, sponsored by the Institute for Advancement of Journalists (IAJ), featured a field trip to a local river, and included discussions on policy frameworks for water provision, responsibilities of local governments and Water Service Providers, implementation of the "free basic water policy", health and hygiene issues, the cholera outbreak in rural areas, and cost recovery/non-payment issues.

E-Conference on Toolkit for Improved Water Supply and Sanitation Services among the Urban Poor, July 1-31, 2000 . Hosted by the Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), Water Utility Partnership, Water and Sanitation Program, and Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
This e-conference was held to assist water sector practitioners and policy makers in low income, urban areas of Africa with practical tools for decision-making. Topics were facilitated by experts in the field, and included the following:

• Strengthening Utility Outreach to the Poor - Customers and Providers
• Undertaking WSS Reforms to Benefit the Poor - Policies and Legal Aspects
• Making Tariffs and Subsidies Work for the Poor - Funding and Cost Recovery
• Innovating to Serve the Poor - Levels of Service

The discussion on Cost Recovery focused on how water services might be financed to meet the needs of the poor, along with designing flexible payment systems, extending coverage to informal and poor areas while recovering costs, and the role of subsidies and tariffs.