Latest Blog

Conversations

Stakeholder engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic: Running an international multi-modal research workshop for the Inclusive WASH-at Work project. 

By Dr Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti, Dr Johanna Loehr, Dr Anindrya Nastiti, and Bronwyn Powell, COVID-19 is impacting people’s lives around the world. It has forced many to take up working from home and is affecting how international research projects are conducted, especially for projects where co-design with stakeholders is required. The International WaterCentre, Griffith University, is working on a DFAT supported Water for Women project in partnership with the University of Udayana, Institute of Technology Bandung and University of the South Pacific, researching water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)-at-Work in hotels in Fiji and Indonesia. The project’s aim is to engage hotels in improving gender equity, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI) WASH-at Work practices, which consider WASH beyond the hotel, including staff, their families and the wider destination. While the project’s focus will help hotels and destinations address new challenges, the current COVID-19 pandemic has created and received wide stakeholder interest; the pandemic has also created new challenges as to how to conduct the project under the current circumstances. An important part of most research projects is to engage with relevant stakeholders to more effectively understand the local context, gain input into project design, collect data, verify or test findings and inform implementation. COVID-19 induced travel restrictions and social distancing requirements impact the format such engagement can take and for a while constrained any form of in-person contact. After some delays, the project recently completed formative research data collection and analysis to understand norms and attitudes to GEDSI WASH-at-Work in Mandalika, Lombok. Mandalika is a popular destination for international and domestic tourists as an alternative to Bali due to its natural beauty, beaches, diving and surfing. Between 2015 and 2019 tourist visits doubled to over 2 million per year and are expected to grow further once travel restrictions are lifted. The project works in partnership with Mitra Samya, a local NGO, and their researchers were able to continue face-to-face data collection using online and social distancing measures. To complete the first formative research phase, a large face-to-face stakeholder engagement workshop had been planned to present and validate findings to government officials, NGOs, tourism operators and community representatives. Gaining stakeholder input in the development of inclusive WASH-at-Work tools was a critical step to inform the next phase, i.e. co-design of the project. Stakeholder input also helps to build and maintain relationships, which are important for the testing of tools and the overall implementation phase. During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, all engagement was limited to online or phone interviews. However, there are advantages to gathering all stakeholders together for a workshop, as it allows the exchange of viewpoints, experiences and information between stakeholders builds trust and confidence between different stakeholders, enables group discussion and the opportunity for the group to agree on priorities. The project team considered a stakeholder workshop critical to the project’s success and thanks to the logistics, planning skills and coordination of in-country team members and partners, a successful multi-modal workshop was held in Mandalika, Lombok, Indonesia in September 2020.   [caption id="attachment_3246" align="aligncenter" width="636"] Workshop activities in Indonesia. Photo:Zoni Mitra Samya.[/caption]   How to conduct a bi-lingual, multi-stakeholder workshop during a pandemic For the Inclusive WASH-at-Work project, it was important for multiple stakeholder groups from different locations to participate. These included hotel managers and community representatives from Mandalika,  as well as provincial planning, tourism and health government representatives based in Central Lombok and Mataram, tourism associations located in Central Lombok, NGOs and academics located in Mataram. The research team consists of members based in Brisbane, Australia, including the project director and chief investigator, the in-country lead based in Denpasar, Bali, a researcher in Bandung, West Java and research assistants based in Lombok. Travel restrictions made it impossible for all team members to attend an in-person workshop. Many people would now have experienced online meetings, seminars and workshops, which many have argued have made access to presentations, online conferences and webinars more inclusive, eliminating the cost and time of travel. The challenge facing the project was that many local stakeholders, in particular community representatives, did not have access to such platforms, as these require a phone or computer and a reliable internet connection, which throws doubt on the inclusivity of such platforms. To ensure representation and input from all stakeholder groups, the project team decided to conduct a multi-modal workshop that would be delivered both online and in-person. Due to the online component, the initial one-day workshop was split into two half-days, to ensure participants did not become weary. The set up Local stakeholders were invited to an in-person workshop at the local site, adhering to social distancing. The Central Lombok Planning Office set aside a large room in their government building in the capital of Central Lombok, which was set up with a projector, internet connection to connect with other online participants and a microphone that connected to the online platform. Seats were spread around a large U-shape table, adhering to social distancing requirements. Several microphones were provided on the tables Project team members and other stakeholders joined the workshop from their offices or homes elsewhere in Indonesia and Australia via the online meeting platform Zoom. Facilitation The room as well as all online participants were connected via Zoom. The in-country lead facilitated the majority of the workshop online, in particular, the presentation of results delivered by project members, partly in English and then translated into Bahasa Indonesia for participants who did not speak English. Stakeholder discussions and activities are important elements of workshops. Local research assistants facilitated in-room discussion for participatory activities that required input from in-room participants only. For group discussion, all participants were spilt into three groups. Each group consisted of in-room and online participants; there were three computers providing in-room connection to the Zoom platform with three different rooms. The three rooms allowed for online participants to be involved in breakout discussion sessions. The discussion in each group was conducted in Bahasa Indonesia. Each group was led by a facilitator, either in-person or online, and was supported by one notetaker. For the presentation of group discussions, all groups returned to the main session. One of the local researchers took notes and translated key messages into English, which were posted on the Zoom chat to allow Australian colleagues to keep up with workshop discussion and respond to questions raised. [caption id="attachment_3243" align="aligncenter" width="614"] Group discussion, facilitated by in-room facilitators that also connected to participants on the Zoom platform. Photo: Zoni Mitra Samya.[/caption]   Lessons learned Workshop outcomes and stakeholder feedback following the workshop were positive indicating that workshops can be conducted even with severe constraints, as long as participants show some flexibility. Using a multi-modal workshop made the workshop more inclusive and enabled the project team to connect a wide range of stakeholders even during times of travel restrictions. To facilitate a workshop that runs both online and in-person, planning and preparation are essential. For our team this included setting up and testing sound, image and internet quality in each location, having a well-planned agenda including time buffers, and detailed briefing of all facilitators. Activities need to be planned to engage in-room participants and participants joining online. In person representation and facilitation of the workshop and activities in each room are also critical so that in-person workshop attendees don’t have to listen to presenters on screen all day. Our experience shows that workshops don’t require everyone to be physically present and that they can be inclusive and successful even in difficult times. This learning is also applicable to provincial level officers and experts, who usually have a tight schedule, to join and monitor the workshop from a distance. Bringing people together allowed them to exchange their recent experiences and talk about a joint approach to moving forward and into the co-design of Inclusive WASH-at-Work guidelines. The team is becoming adept at running multi-modal workshops and will be planning more. Acknowledgements This research project is funded by the Australian Government and implemented by International WaterCentre as part of the Water for Women Fund. This blog post was written by Dr Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti, University of Udayana, Dr Anindrya Nastiti, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Dr Johanna Loehr, Bronwyn Powell and Prof. Helen Johnson, International WaterCentre, Griffith University. We would like to thank and acknowledge our colleagues in this project, Dr Dawn Gibson, Nanise Masau, Patricia Bibi, Dr Chris Fleming and Dr Wade Hadwen. [caption id="attachment_3245" align="aligncenter" width="359"] Professor Helen Johnson delivering live presentations online to workshop participants, with translation provided by online facilitators. Photo:  International WaterCentre.[/caption]

08/12/20

Conversations

Happy World Toilet Day from the International WaterCentre! 

  19 November 2020

Did you know that 4.2 billion people do not have access to safely managed sanitation around the world?

In 2020, the lucky ones amongst us have been enjoying our home toilets more than usual thanks to COVID-19 restrictions. What better chance to daydream of your next overseas visit? When you think about where to travel, will you be thinking about the quality of the hotel bathroom facilities? And what of the toilet facilities of surrounding communities? One IWC research project, Engaging corporate actors for inclusive WASH-at-work, is unpacking the real water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) situation in hotels and surround communities in Indonesia and Fiji. Whilst it has been hit hard by COVID-19 travel restrictions, Mandalika in Lombok (Indonesia) is tipped to be the next ‘big Bali’. It is an increasingly popular and rapidly developing tourism destination for domestic and international visitors. While tourists there enjoy excellent services, this is not necessarily the case for locals, with between 5-15% of the population in surrounding villages not having access to toilets at home. Solutions to address this gap need concerted efforts of government, communities as well as hotels who all have a role to play in delivering clean and healthy environments. To read more about this project’s work to develop Inclusive WASH-at-work approaches with hotels and other stakeholders for equitable development visit the project site.   [caption id="attachment_3220" align="alignnone" width="668"] IWC's WASH project teams wish you a Happy World Toilet Day![/caption]   NOTE: Banner image photo credit, Jax10289/istock via Getty Images.

19/11/20

• 
• Author
  Bronwyn Powell

Conversations

Professional postgraduate education in a COVID world 

By Brian McIntosh How on earth will we keep going? This is a thought that many educators in Australia are asking right now, about whether the programs they run will be possible to run next year or beyond. COVID-19 will be sticking around for a while and we’re certainly wrestling with this question at the International WaterCentre. How can we keep going? But rather than just accepting a struggle, how can we set in place the arrangements that will let us thrive? How can we adapt what we do to remain true to our founding mission ‘to change the way that people think and act to solve complex water management challenges?'

...whilst we are asking ourselves ‘how on earth will we keep going’ in this upturned COVID world, we are also looking keenly to how we can innovate, adapt and improve.

In Australia, COVID-19, means that our international borders remain closed and even some of our internal state borders are closed or require expensive 2 week hotel quarantine periods once you have passed over them. Paying a $2000 or $3000 hotel bill for quarantine is a bit of a deterrent to inter-state travel one has to imagine. So, we need to think really differently about how we deliver the best transformative integrated water management educational experience within the constraints of not being able to travel much, if it all. 2021 will not be a normal year. 2020 has already been a year of rapid adaptation and far from normal delivery. April and May drove us to trial some innovations like the deliberate seeding of leadership behaviours to help our cohort glue together and support each other under lockdown. We ended up on a really fast sprint to online delivery and the creation of ‘Water Droplets’, an interactive online weekly series of guest speakers covering everything from blockchain water trading systems to community-driven urban stream restoration, to both help our students gain insights from some of the most exciting and experienced practitioners around, and to meet and talk with them. Sort of networking for professional development in an online COVID world way. We’re currently looking for ways to connect interested students to professional practice to enrich their learning further and to take the next steps in evolving their careers. 2021 will be a year of further change, but we don’t need to plan and do at the same time. We have a few months up our sleeves to plan and implement the changes we want and need for 2021. What are we thinking of?

• Creating a digital learning platform to help us create an online learning community – we’re thinking of using Teams as it has an interface that is great for discussions and file sharing, and you can add plugins like wikis etc to enable student authoring and content curation – essential for community based co-learning. Think about a Team as being a course in a Masters program, so you will belong to multiple Teams during your degree. Within each Team there will be Channels, each corresponding to a course topic. The webinar by Dr. Kellerman of UNSW on this page shows some of what can be done with Teams as an educational platform. And because our Masters programs are enrolled at Griffith students get access to Teams and the Office 365 package at no extra cost beyond the standard program fees.
• Offering FT and PT study wherever you are – up to now we have only offered full time (FT) on campus learning for international students but we know there are many people who want to study and learn whilst keeping their current jobs and living wherever they currently live. We’ve been trialling opening up our Masters programs to live international participation this current trimester 2 with a Norwegian participant and a Canadian participant. The time zones don’t always line up perfectly but we are able to record online sessions and offer more 1-2-1 student support afterwards for interaction and discussion.
• Moving to a mixed online and intensive experiential model – we know that our students enjoy learning as part of a cohort, a community, and also that our immersive and experiential field based and situation focussed learning intensives create lasting impact. There is no better way to learn about the complex and integrated social-economic-environmental dimensions of a situation than from talking to those who are within it, and observing and analysing it first-hand. So one future we are looking at is running our programs with a core online delivery complemented by a set of the best experiential learning intensives here in Australia or in other parts of the world.

So whilst we are asking ourselves ‘how on earth will we keep going’ in this upturned COVID world, we are also looking keenly to how we can innovate, adapt and improve. Every problem is also an opportunity and we’re getting ready to move. Join us by getting in contact to share ideas or suggestions you have about how you would like to learn about IWM whilst we are in a COVID reality.

13/10/20

New tool shows water security vital for fighting COVID-19 in Indo-Pacific 

By Dr Lachlan Guthrie and Thomas Pitts, In support of the Australian Government’s Partnerships for Recovery policy, the Australian Water Partnership (AWP) has launched the COVID-19 Water Security Risk Index, developed by Griffith University researchers. The index enables governments, communities, and development organisations to identify risks and prioritise water-related responses in the Indo-Pacific. Supported by the AWP, researchers at Griffith University’s International Water Centre and the School of Medicine have collaborated to develop the innovative Index, drawing on readily available global datasets. Building on the Asian Development Bank’s Asian Water Development Outlook approach, as well as public health risk frameworks, it considers factors that influence a country’s vulnerability to respond to COVID-19 risks from a water security perspective. “The index enables us to identify the points of concern for each country and prioritise the most appropriate water-based interventions to reduce a country’s risk of COVID-19 impacts in the short-term and build long-term resilience,” said Dr Lachlan Guthrie, International Water Centre project leader. He said while the ability of people to wash their hands is vitally important, it was only one of many important water-related factors that influence risk. “We’ve been able to show that water can play a major role in the response to and recovery from COVID-19, not just hygiene which is obviously very important. “In the majority of Pacific countries, for example, they are recording a relatively low number of cases which reflects their ability to delay a COVID-19 outbreak from ‘sparking’. However, when their borders reopen they would be at extremely high risk due to poor access to water and sanitation, and having the highest rates of mortality risk factors in the Asia-Pacific.” Associate Professor Anne Roiko, from the School of Medicine, who led the public health angle of the project said their work on the index highlighted the critical role of water in understanding and dealing with the pandemic. “In our framing of the COVID-19 Water Security Risk Index, we integrated elements of environmental and public health, biomedical science, economics, engineering, and water, sanitation and hygiene.” Dr Guthrie said their work was a great starting point. “What is exciting, is the potential to collaborate with other researchers and stakeholders and address specific and equally important challenges as we learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and what strategies minimise its impacts.” AWP CEO, Professor Nick Schofield, emphasised Australia’s role in helping its neighbours. “This index is supporting COVID-19 preparedness, response and recovery activities across the Indo-Pacific to secure our region’s health, wellbeing and stability in these challenging times.” NOTE: This article was previously posted on Griffith News.

13/10/20