Thanks to CAWST, amidst the challenging time of the ongoing pandemic, ITN-BUET was introduced to ENPHO from Nepal over Zoom. ENPHO, short for Environment and Public Health Organization, was established in 1990 and is acting as one of the lead organizations in WASH in Nepal ever since.
CAWST had been working with ENPHO for more than a decade. Recognizing the similar interest in two organizations, Ms. Lona Robertson from CAWST approached ITN-BUET to make the introduction. ITN-BUET, recognizing a good opportunity for future collaboration, expressed their interest as well.
Mr. Rajendra Shrestha, Program Director, Mr. Ash Kumar Khaitu, Training Centre Manager and Ms. Srijana Karki, Senior WASH Officer attended the meeting from ENPHO.
Training Specialist Mr. Imtiaz Sharif led the meeting from ITN-BUET. He was accompanied by Knowledge Management Specialist Ms. Makfie Farah and Research Officer Ms. Saleema Najenin Siddiqua.
In the meeting, Ms. Lona acted as the moderator and introduced the participants with one another in a unique way. The representative from both organizations had an opportunity to learn about each other on both individual and organizational level.
They shared the Mission, Vision and Activities of their own organization. They also learned about COVID-19 response initiatives of the other organization. ITN-BUET learned about the field level activities of ENPHO along with their social media campaign whereas ENPHO learned about the policy-level initiatives taken by ITN-BUET.
The meeting ended with possible future collaboration ideas shared by the participants. Both teams showed interest to continue the communication. The teams decided to appoint Mr. Imtiaz and Mr. Ash Kumar as focal persons.
Some possible future collaboration ideas were shared as mentioned below:
- ITN-BUET would like to learn about ENPHO’s work in building the capacity of Municipality officials for COVID response.
- ENPHO would like to continue sharing and interaction with ITN-BUET and exchange the learnings between two organization.
- ITN-BUET would be interested to learn about ENPHO’s research in innovative technology.
- Both organizations can share capacity building modules with each other. They can also invite each other in upcoming training programs to observe and learn.
- ITN-BUET would like to learn about ENPHO’s gender perspective incorporated for COVID response
ENPHO would like to learn about ITN-BUET’s work on capacity building on COVID, FSM and WATER SAFETY PLAN etc.
