On Tuesday, July 4th 2023, Global Water Partnership (GWP), The Social Innovation Park LTD (SIP) and Unicorns for Good (UFG) agreed to build cooperation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on water security, climate resilience, tech-for-good, mindful leadership and the global water changemakers. The MoU signing ceremony took place at ITE College Central, Enterprise Development Center, Singapore. The MoU was signed by Elena Trovesi, Interim Executive Secretary and CEO of GWP; Elisabetta Jiang, Co-founder of UFG; and Penny Low, Founder and President of the SIP LTD.
The three organizations are committed to advancing global water security and providing leadership in public and private organisations. This will be done through systematic utilisation of the parties’ logistics, technical, network, and financial capabilities in the areas of collaboration globally, emphasising the region of Asia & Pacific. The area of collaboration consists of positive change through education, innovation, knowledge development, and capacity building focusing on climate-resilient water security, ensuring the exchange of knowledge, scaling up on innovations, best practices, and the cultivation of mindful leadership in communities. The water changemaker awards 2023 will be a starting point for this collaboration.
The water changemaker awards is a global initiative that aims to recognize high-level commitment and leadership for climate-resilient water investments and showcase the most promising climate-resilient innovations with the greatest potential for scale, replication, and further investment to support a water-secure world. This is the second competition following the first that was launched in April 2020 where the winner was announced during the event of the Climate Adaptation Summit on 25 January 2021.
Following the MoU signing was a panel discussion on innovative water solutions and youth empowerment. Pablo Bereciartua (Chairman of Global Water Partnership) and Atem S. Ramsundersingh (Steering Committee member of Global Water Partnership) represent GWP in the panel discussion. They highlighted the importance of governance and innovation in the water sector. Pablo mentioned, “We are initiating Water Changemaker awards to identify new most innovative start-ups that come from many places in the world. The launch for the Asia region will be done in Asia International Water Week 2023, on 6 July in Seoul. The key point of the program is to attract more investment in innovative water solutions.”
