To deliver on the goal of providing universal access to clean water and improved sanitation, to better balance the water needs of economics and societies with those of ecosystems, to clean up our waterways, restore our river basins and to adapt to the growing impacts of climate change, we need to build leadership capacity across the water sector, globally. To do so, we need to encourage and cultivate emerging water leaders across all levels of all organisations to connect, collaborate and drive change more rapidly than ever before. We need to develop team leaders to motivate and enable more effectively, we need to cultivate authenticity and ethics, we need champions for new ideas-technologies-practices, and we need to develop cross-boundary to transform the way we think about and act to manage water.
The Pathway Program is the International WaterCentre’s globally focused water leadership development program. Comprised of three levels, the purpose of the Pathway Program is to provide an easily accessible, foundational leadership development program for water professionals and practitioners to strengthen their ability to exert influence and drive positive change in their projects and workplaces, and to address our most significant water-related challenges.
Level 1 of the Program commences in September each year, and is a 10-week, interactive, online course that introduces participants to foundational leadership concepts and provides guidance and ‘leadership stories’ (i.e. short case studies and personal stories from distinguished water leaders) on how to address common leadership challenges in the water sector.
Level 2 of the Program commences in March each year (starting 2025), and is an optional level for water practitioners who have completed Level 1 and want to do more intensive work on their leadership capacity in partnership with an IWC leadership coach. This level involves designing, delivering and evaluating a challenging water leadership project over 6 months, and using it as a ‘leadership practice field’ to apply the principles, concepts, tools and guidelines from Level 1.
Level 3 also commences in March each year (starting in 2026), and has a similar design to Level 2, and is also optional. Level 3 involves scoping, designing, delivering and evaluating a significant, leadership-focused capacity building event or project to help enable other water practitioners to drive change. This is a further leadership development opportunity (i.e. a ‘practice field’ for leadership).
Read on, download our brochure and watch two short films from emerging water leaders globally, to find out more about why developing water leadership skills is important, and how you can go about doing so.
Learn more about The Pathway Program
Keen to know even more? The Learning Summary provides a week by week detailed breakdown of Level 1.
Watch these videos from two outstanding emerging water leaders from around the world – Antonella Vagliente and Yang Villa – to learn why strengthening water leadership capacity globally is important.
Level 1 of the Pathway Program aims to help any professional or practitioner in the water sector to build their confidence, knowledge and skill in exerting exert influence to drive change towards more sustainable outcomes. In particular, it seeks to serve:
The Pathway Program aims to be as inclusive as possible by not assuming that the participants have a particular form of experience, occupy particular leadership roles, have particular forms of power or have already developed a ‘leader identity’. Nevertheless, participants in level 1 of the Program will need:
For participants based outside of Australia – Click the link below to make payment by Credit Card. If you are an organisation looking to sign up multiple staff and would prefer to pay by invoice, please email us at iwc@griffith.edu.au If you are based in Australia and wish to enrol in the course, please contact us at iwc_training@griffith.edu.au
(Note that you must have completed Level 1 before enrolling in Level 2.)