ITN-BUET offers international online CWIS training with ENPHO and EAWAG

As an effort to establish itself as a regional capacity-building hub, ITN-BUET, Bangladesh has offered a three-week-long (from 11 January-03 February 2021) online training on “City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation: Principles and their Application” in collaboration with ENPHO of Nepal, and EAWAG of Switzerland.

The live sessions of the online course will be run through Zoom, and all course/reading materials, video documents, quizzes, assignments etc., will be uploaded in the Coursera learning platform. The target group of the course is mostly consultants and professionals working on urban sanitation in Asian countries, and a total of 22 participants from 6 countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Switzerland, Nigeria, Germany, and Yemen, have registered for this course.

By participating in this training, participants will learn the concepts of City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS), including elements of CWIS, tools for diagnosing and designing urban sanitation services and service delivery from the renowned experts from EAWAG, ITN-BUET, and ENPHO. They will also take part in preparing real-time bidding documents for a CWIS service delivery project and go through the process of competing for projects and getting awarded. Dr. Sheikh Mokhlesur Rahman of the Department of Civil Engineering, BUET is one of the instructors of the course.

The formal inauguration of the course was held on 13 January 2021, where the course participants, representatives from the three collaborating organizations (ITN-BUET, ENPHO, and EAWAG), course administrators and observers attended the inaugural session. Prof. Dr. Tanvir Ahmed, Director, ITN-BUET, informed in the inaugural session that ITN-BUET will offer this training course in future to develop the capacity of local consultants and other private firms who would potentially be engaged in delivering CWIS services in towns and cities in Bangladesh. Dr. Christoph Lüthi, Head of Department, EAWAG-Sandec, Switzerland, said that this training would enhance the capacity of sanitation consultants and professionals to design an urban sanitation project. After completing the course, participants will be awarded an ITN-BUET-ENPHO-EAWAG joint certificate. This is the first formal training program offered by ITN-BUET to an international audience.