Teun Bastemeijer

Teun is the founder of Minerva Wise Water Development and Teun has a track record as facilitator of strategic dialogues around water, land management, environment and development.

As a champion of interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral approaches, he supported and informed policy development processes involving private and public stakeholders, including communities, local authorities, basin organizations, water service operators and representatives of civil society. 

Through these experiences he learned that equitable multi-stakeholder participation and gender balance can help to find realistic, sustainable, innovative and ethical solutions, and – perhaps more importantly – to build trust and commitment that translate into partnerships and networks that survive individual projects.

Building on this, he contributed strongly to the creation of the Water Governance Initiative (OECD-WGI) from 2011 to 2013, and to its development as a representative of the Water Integrity Network (WIN) on its Steering Committee from 2013 to 2019.

Teun is a partner with the Water Partner Foundation

Rose OSINDE-ALABASTER

Rose OSINDE-ALABASTER has in the past 20 years advised governments, UN agencies, civil
society organizations, multi-stakeholder platforms, and the private sector on more effective water and
environmental sanitation governance, cross-sector planning, investment and programming, human
rights and development. She has training in education; water governance; international human rights
and conflict management from University of Bradford, UK.

In Switzerland, Rose is a co-founder of the Swiss-based development organization – Water
Environment and Human Development Initiative WEHDI (www.wehdi.org) – whose mission is to
promote multi-dimensional approach to planning, programming and monitoring of water and
environmental initiatives, to minimize negative social economic and environmental impacts, while
advancing sustainable development. She currently provides pro-bono technical advisory services, as
part of the Steering Committees of WEHDI; the Swiss Water Partnership (SWP) steering Board; the
Waterpreneurs Advisory committee and for the Science Action in Schools for Sustainable
Development, ETH, Zurich.

Rose has worked in grant-making, strategic planning; programme formulation as well as evaluation
with experience in programming, assessments, formulation programmes and in strategic planning.
At the international level, as part of her engagement with development cooperation actors and grant
making, Rose has worked in project preparation for the Africa water Facility and interacted with the
Africa Development Bank, the European Commission as staff and evaluator; and with a number of UN
agencies (including with UNEP regional office for Africa, UNDP, UNICEF UNHABITAT, WMO,
WHO).

Rose has contributed directly to Strategy Development for a number of organizations and currently
mainly through being a strategic advisor in a number of steering boards: currently serving as 1) a
member of the Board of the Swiss Water Partnership; 2) Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the
Group on Earth Observation (GEO)`s initiative on Global Water Sustainability; 3) Technical Advisor,
Science Action in Schools for Sustainable Development (SAS4SD) in ETH University Zurich for
SDG implementation through curricula change; 4) Scientific Committee member with
WaterPreneurs – a private sector social enterprise working towards promoting impact investments
as part of attaining the SDGs ; 5) Water supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council WSSCC Geneva.

Through assessments of programmes and through institutional development, she has contributed to
water, sanitation and environmental governance and policy dialogues as well as in establishment of
practical decision-making tools and guidelines.

Paul J. M. van Hoof

I am born in 1959 in the Netherlands, which I left in the early 90s to work for SNV Netherlands Development Organisation in various Anglophone Countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. In 2008, I settled together with my wife in South Africa, from where I am working as a freelance public governance consultant. 

I have close to 30 years of professional experience in strengthening democratic governance, decentralisation, enhancing public service delivery, improving social accountability, state-citizen interaction and strengthening civil society performance in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

My core competencies are:

• Drafting strategies and providing capacity building support for democratisation processes for government and non-government actors at local and national level to:
  • enhance the efficacy and efficiency of public service delivery,
  • strengthen citizen participation in decision-making processes,
  • improve state-citizen communication and transparency,
  • increase adherence to rule of law (anti-corruption),
  • enhance the capacities and improve the functioning of CSO’s in the democratic process, and
  • strengthen social accountability mechanisms and capacities
• Designing, implementing and providing technical assistance for public governance assessments or monitoring frameworks (for national, local and sector assessments), like the Local Governance Barometer;
• Evaluation of complex governance capacity building programmes and projects using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies (including social media survey techniques) for UNDP and the EU;
• Providing policy advice on decentralisation processes and assessing the outcome and impact of ongoing decentralisation programmes like Performance Based Grant Systems for Local Governments;

While I have no specific water management background or experience, my governance experience might be useful to Minerva in the design and testing of innovative water governance initiatives.

I would be in particular interested to assist in:

• assessing water governance performance,  
• facilitating multi stakeholder dialogue (especially state-citizen interaction) related to water governance,
• and, together with water management specialists, tackle the accountability gaps that exist in many governance schemes.

Elisabeth Bastemeijer

Elisabeth is Dutch and French and grew up in Madagascar, Tanzania and the Netherlands. Founder of Mind Your Stories. Intercultural communication, visual storytelling and education are her three main fields of interest.

She is convinced that we can make everything so much more interesting and create stronger connections if we tell or show the story behind things, people, projects and ideas.

Whether it was teaching small children in Ethiopia, teaching yoga, writing life stories of Turkish and Moroccan women, or making small films about international cooperation projects, everything she has done so far has been guided by this conviction.

Dr. Madiodio Niasse

Dr. Madiodio Niasse is an independent consultant based in Dakar, Senegal. He was formerly (2008-2014) the Director of the Secretariat of the International Land Coalition (ILC), based in Rome, Italy. Prior to joining ILC, Dr. Niasse served as Senior Researcher with the French Institute for Development Research (2007-2008), and earlier as Water Programme Coordinator with IUCN-West Africa based in Ouagadougou, Burkina (2001-2005), Senior Policy Advisor with the World Commission on Dams in Cape Town South Africa (1998-2000), etc. As consultant, Dr Niasse has, in the last 5 years, led or participated as team member in numerous missions on strategy and project formulation and evaluation in the areas of water resources management, land governance and environment, etc. Supported entities include river basin organisations and development agencies such as WAEMU-UEMOA, GWP, AfDB, UNECA, UNESCO, UNEP-DHI, IIED-UK, European Commission, etc. Dr. Niasse is former chairperson of the Roster of Experts (Inspection Panel) of the Independent Review Mechanism of the African Development Bank (2007-2010); and of the West Africa platform of the Global Water Partnership (GWP): 2005-2008. From 2012 to 2017, he was member of the GWP Technical Committee. A citizen of Senegal, Dr. Niasse is geographer and environmental scientist by training (graduating from the University of Dakar, now known as University Cheikh Anta Diop).

Pauline Komolong

Nationality – Papua New Guinean

Current Address – Brisbane Australia

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION:

• Degree in Civil Engineering – Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Lae, MP, PNG
• Master’s degree in integrated water management (International Water Centre- University of Queensland Australia)

EXPERIENCE: more than 15 years’ experience in the Pacific Islands implementing Integrated Water Management Projects.

CAREER INTEREST:

I have an interest and passion in the sustainable management of water resources, safe sanitation, and improved hygiene behavior. I have been contributing to these key areas in Papua New Guinea (PNG),  the Republic of Kiribati  and the Pacific region since 2005 to ensure that improved Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) are accessed and safely managed  by the majority of indigenous communities in urban centers, settlements and rural communities.

WASH is an integrated program that crosscuts many important sectors such as livelihood, peacebuilding, nutrition, human development, and ecosystem services. However, the lack of this vital service has contributed to high rates of WASH-related diseases mainly among children leading to high death rates. Furthermore, the poor management of the water resources has resulted in the increased rates of surface and ground water depletion, increased salinity, and pollution of the water sources. 

Pacific Island Countries and Territories have signed the SDGs and have a commitment to address WASH related targets by 2030. The provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene is staggering in some countries while other countries are doing quite well but overall, the Pacific Region have a long way to reach its SDGs. The challenges faced by the countries are mainly funding, expertise, policy, planning and communication. Most of these people live in rural areas and settlements and do not have access to the improved WASH services.

With greater challenges faced in the Pacific, some of the key factors influencing WASH status include small economies, geographic complexity and population growth, climate change impacts, increasing urbanization, gender, knowledge and information, WASH infrastructure and WASH support for vulnerable groups.

Being a female from the Pacific with a strong Water Management background, I am a firm believer that Water is important to everyone. We need to work in collaboration with various Ministries, Organizations, Communities and Donors to ensure that this vital resource is accessed by everyone.

Water Management knowledge and expertise includes:

• Project Management
• Science of Water
• Water, Sustainability and Development
• Water, Governance and Policy
• Catchment and Aquatic Ecosystem Health
• Water Planning and Economics
• Water Supply and Sanitation

 DEMONSTRATED SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Strong leadership skills with the ability to manage, coordinate, supervise and train staff on water, sanitation      and hygiene tools and operation & maintenance skills to sustain community Water, Design, plan and implement ground and surface water supplies.
• Proposal writing, management and monitoring of Integrated Water Management projects and programmes.
• Sound knowledge on log frames and risk matrix tables
• Highly sound communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills.
• Planning and execution of activities according to work plans.
• Management of finance and tracking costs against activities.
• Excellent logistics and procurement knowledge.
• Ability to prepare tenders and the process of tender awarding.
• Liaise and coordinate with local communities and other stakeholders at all levels and relevant departments.
• Response to disaster and emergencies.
• Conduct rapid rural assessments (RRA) and participatory rural assessments (PRA).
• Able to conduct WASH research and analyze data sets.
• Critique WASH policies.
• Ability to fit in any community and work harmoniously with different people from different race, ethnicity, and cultures to religions.
• Develop Village action plans or agreement on the details of the project.
• Writing of Cabinet papers to get Government endorsing project scope and details.
• Responding to oral queries from the Government during parliament sessions
• Facilitating the sanitation menu of options.
• Planning and implementation of Water Safety Plans.
• Designing and implementing a capacity building programme for communities and key government staff
• Sound understanding of groundwater resources.

Water Partner Foundation

The mission of Water Partner Foundation is to bring together good governance, water management and financial expertise for the initiation, implementation and support of key sustainable water management programmes around the world.

Good governance and sustainable management of the water resources around the world are key challenges of today’s water and environmental managers.

Rapidly growing water demands, increasing flooding problems and droughts, growing threats for water pollution and environmental degradation pose serious responsibilities on the shoulders of today’s governments and the society.

Water Partner Foundation is a non-profit organisation that aims to increase global dissemination of knowledge and experiences in good governance, financing and sustainable management of the world’s water resources and the environment.

Nextblue

Nextblue is a storytelling platform about water and climate change. Nextblue uses stories to empower the voices of communities in the heart of delta regions around the world.