The City of Cape Town’s Water and Sanitation Directorate, in partnership with Nuffic on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of the Orange Knowledge Programme, the University of the Western Cape, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) and World Waternet Amsterdam, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enter into a training partnership programme that looks at addressing water and sanitation challenges in informal settlements during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. Yesterday Thursday 17 March 2022, 21 City employees who enrolled for UWC’s Community Engagement (CE): Stakeholder Engagement Short Course, offered as a contribution to the third module of the Nuffic Consortium project, graduated during a ceremony held at the City Hall in Cape Town.
The focus of this partnership is implementing the first of the City’s Water Strategy’s five commitments which includes ‘Safe access to water and sanitation’ and addresses the current Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
‘We are proud and excited to support the City of Cape Town‘s Water Strategy with the emphasis on social inclusion and to contribute to the process of Co-creating solutions with residents of informal settlements to take ownership of the facilities provided by the City,’ said Dr Henk Van Den Heuvel, Director: Center for International Cooperation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
The Nuffic grant funding recipient was the Centre for International Cooperation from the VU Amsterdam. Funding to the value of over EUR 196 000.00 (over R3,6 million) was provided in the form of non-monetary technical assistance to provide tailor-made training interventions to various directorates within the City of Cape Town.
In addition, the UWC contributed EUR 6 926.00 (R114 840.00) for the registration and training material of the 21 officials that enrolled for module three (the existing accredited UWC CE: Stakeholder Engagement shortcourse) which could not be funded from the Nuffic grant funding.
Professor Lawack, UWC’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, explained the importance of Societal Impact (SI) through Scholarship of Engagement (SOE) at UWC. She emphasised the key principles for community engagement at UWC, saying for example ‘that our communities are co-creators of knowledge, that we engage ethically with our communities and we don’t research “at” but conduct research with our communities as equal partners and that we do not fly in and out of communities, but work together with the communities to find sustainable solutions,’ said Professor Lawack.
The training programme sought to facilitate interdisciplinary capacity building through peer-to-peer learning, knowledge exchange and interaction with engaged academics and other experts from South Africa and the Netherlands.
The training programme consisted of the following four modules:
- Sanitation best practices during pandemics: This included training on sanitation best practices from leading water organisations with a focus on decentralised sanitation in informal settlements.
- Strategy implementation and regional action plan development. It involved training to support the directorate with the translation of the City’s Water Strategy into regional action plans and programmes.
- Stakeholder engagement, an existing continuous education accredited short course of the UWC, focused on inclusion and comprised capacity building of departmental officials responsible for water and sanitation in informal settlements. Also, creating a platform for consultation, effective communication, cooperation, and participation among different stakeholders in informal settlements.
- Organisational renewal and dissemination of results which includes the translation of learnings and results into changes that are needed for the organisation to be ready for the future towards becoming a water sensitive city.
‘The City welcomes this partnership as it encourages building trust and creates a genuine conversation between cities and key players that involves Cape Town projects. Different perspectives and backgrounds ultimately lead to creativity and constructive relations and provide a safe space for building best practices in water and sanitation from different perspectives,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Sanitation, Councillor Zahid Badroodien.
Knowledge sharing formed part of solution-based innovation and ideas in solving the following challenges:
- Topography; geotechnical, drainage and flood conditions of the settled areas
- The capacity of existing reticulation networks and wastewater plants
- Frequent sewer blockages
- Accessibility for repairs and maintenance on networks
- Lack of community ownership and high levels of theft and vandalism of water and sanitation assets.
- Rejection of typologies
- Continuous growth impact on service ratio’s
- Spike in Land invasion and demands of basic service provision
- Unplanned, dense settlements make it difficult to install services
‘The training modules of this programme sought to find different solutions and key learnings from previous case studies for local sanitation in other countries and cities such as Medellin in Colombia, Amsterdam, Jakarta and the City of Buenos Aires in Argentina and we are proud to be a part of this incredible learning process,’ said Councillor Badroodien.
For more information on the short courses of the UWC Community Engagement Unit, visit: https://www.ceu.uwc.ac.za/training