Up to 300 participants from more than 30 countries were gathered for the Gender, Water and Development Conference, 7-11 November in East London, South Africa. The conference is organised as a step towards an on-going journey to change equality, equity and development in the water sector.

The Director of the National Water Agency of Brazil, Gisela Forattini, who is also a GWP Steering Committee member, introduced the GWP Gender Strategy at the Governmental Forum of Social Responsibility held on 18 September in Brazil.

Mongolia was recently established as a GWP Country Water Partnership (CWP). Professor Davaa Basandorj is the Executive Director of the new CWP. He says that the biggest water problem in Mongolia is water shortage, and that the water management in the country has to be improved.

As part of GWP’s programme to introduce its knowledge database, the IWRM Toolbox, into relevant university curricula, two workshops were held in China in September.

An expanded GWP Technical Committee (TEC) meeting took place 29-30 August in Stockholm, bringing together 35 participants and experts selected by the GWP regional partnerships. GWP Executive Secretary Dr. Ania Grobicki encouraged the participants to work as “One GWP”.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development (MINEPDED) in collaboration with Global Water Partnership (GWP) Cameroon and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Cameroon country office organised a national workshop to present and validate the country’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP).

GWP Burkina Faso implemented the start-up meeting and first national training workshop on June 16th and 17th to 20th, 2014, respectively in Ouagadougou. The start-up workshop was chaired by the General Secretary of the Ministry of Water, Hydraulic facilities and Sanitation, the Executive Secretary of GWP-West Africa and the Chair of GWP-WACDEP Burkina Faso.

WACDEP Tunisia held their first national training workshop from June 2nd to 5th, 2014 in Bizerta, north of Tunisia. The workshop was well attended by 16 participants, drawing from the key institutions involved in water security and climate resilience in Tunisia.

A three-day National Adaptation Plan (NAP) training workshop was held from the 3rd to 5th of September in Salima, Malawi as an effort to help the Government of Malawi identify the next steps in establishing a NAP process. The workshop was highly interactive drawing upon a broad range of climate sensitive sectors and stakeholders, and was successful in reaching its overall objectives of building an understanding of the NAP process and to draft a roadmap for country level advancement.