Wetskills Netherlands 2020-
by Lauren Pope, WASTE adviser
The first Wetskills since the COVID slowdowns is proving to be the best form of a hybrid online-live event I’ve experienced. After many months of only webinar and online meetings, it is wonderful to be here in Leeuwarden to connect with such an ambitious peer group. As a young professional immersed in the sanitation and waste sector, learning about all the pieces of the water sector ecosystem here in the Netherlands has been the most interesting—it’s been a great opportunity to sit at the WaterAlliance/Water Campus building and meet with all the experts.
Today, we had a webinar call with Prof. Peter van der Maas from Van Hall Larenstein to share our ideas and see what technologies he could suggest as potentially viable options we hadn’t considered. Needless to say, after this call, we got almost back to ‘square one’ to re-analyze which technologies would have the most and intended impact for our case study.
After such a long, productive day, most of us were needing some relief and a warm meal. We organised ourselves to make a ‘pot-luck’ dinner at our gracious host’s home at JabixHuis, resulting in an amazing international spread (from Dutch staples like homemade appelflappen to Mexican salsa and Kenyan ugali and curry) which we enjoyed together with socially distanced tables.
Music and dancing wrapped up the night, just early enough for a proper night’s rest!
