The webinar gathered university students from Universities of Jaffna and Ruhuna and Interns working at International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Water professionals from Center for the Women's Research (CENWOR), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) Sri Lanka and the youth who are interested on water and representing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) present at the discussion. Almost 20 participants including the Assistant Divisional Secretary of Vavuniya actively engaged the discussion and interacted with each other as well as the facilitator through chat box. The webinar was hosted by Kusum Athukorala, Regional Council Member- GWP SAS while Coach Wouter Arriens and Vanh Mixap from TransformationFirst.Aisa coordinated the discussion.
The webinar highlighted the importance of having a dedicated communication tool for the network to facilitate better interaction among the members. The tool should be available for all the members and the members should circulate timely and relevant information using the tool in order to keep the network updated on the current affairs. The communication tool should facilitate strengthening the network without losing any member. By considering all these concerns, WhatsApp was suggested as a possibility where most of the youth are using today in their daily communications with the nowadays-available smart phones. Further, some of the participants explained their success stories and their plans on the way to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, and some have showed their interest in engaging and using these lessons learnt in their activity planning. The next concern was that, there is a trend of losing the water Professional in the water sector thereby losing the monitoring element.
The youth were able to make this one and a half hours meeting vibrant and productive. Youth dispersed with a plan to develop a better communication tool for the network that would allow them to share their knowledge and experiences with each other.