Newsletter # 3

ELA News 3 – June 22, 2009

This is an electronic newsletter of the Empowerment and Local Action (ELA) team, Women in Europe for a Common Future. Please, contact Tetyana Penteado for questions, news to be included and all other information.

Contents of this issue:
1. ELA Meeting Room Blog
2. NEW WECF President
3. Trainings in Caucasus / CA
4. Change in the Composition of the ELA Team

1. ELA Meeting Room Blog
Дорогие партнеры,

ELA Meeting Room - это новый сайт в Интернете: www.elameetingroom.blogspot.com , где помещается информация об ЭЛА.

Этот сайт называется «место встречи», потому что мы хотим, чтобы все участники ЭЛА смогли там встречаться и рассказывать друг другу о своих проектах, а так же получать информацию о программе. Например, вы сможете прочитать о том, что партнеры-участники ЭЛА рассказывают о своих проектах и оставить свои комментарии и вопросы к ним. Так же там находится архив наших «Newsletter».

Для бурных же дискуссий о технологиях и по тематическим вопросам просим вас исползовать рассылку ИНТЕРА, преемник рассылки ИНСАН. Ссылку на форум ИНТЕРА вы найдете на нашем новом сайте.

Для того, чтобы стать постоянным членом ELA Meeting Room, вам нужно:
1. Oткрыть google account.
2. Зайти на www.elameetingroom.blogspot.com
3. Нажать на клавишу «войти» или «sign in» в правом верхнем углу. Вы автоматически перейдете на страничку https://www.blogger.com/start
4. Войдите, используя google account; там можно так же выбрать язык пользования сайтом.
5. Вернитесь обратно на www.elameetingroom.blogspot.com
6. Добро пожаловать на наше «место встречи»!:)
Пожалуйста, не стесняйтесь обращаться ко мне, если будет что-то не получаться с регистрацией на сайте. Я непременно помогу!

Ждем ваших комментарий и впечатлений о нашем новом «месте общения»!

2. New WECF President

Also, WECF has a new president, Christine von Weizsäcker, replacing the founding president Marie Kranendonk. Marie was bid a formal farewell at the conference marking WECF's 15th anniversary in The Hague. Link: http://www.wecf.eu/english/articles/2009/05/wecf-anniversary.php

The new president of WECF, Christine von Weizsäcker, is a biologist, researcher and activist. She has been working on technology assessment for civil society since the mid-seventies and participated in the negotiations of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety since 1994. Her many publications have contributed to the scientific and public debate. Amongst the organisations she was serving are the following: Ecoropa (European Network of Networkers on Environement, Democracy and North-South Justice), president; Diverse Women for Diversity, co-founder; CBD-Alliance (international alliance of NGOs attending the negotiations of the UN-Convention on Biological Diversity and its Cartagena Protocol), board; Advisory Committee on Sustainable Development of the Protestant Churches in Germany, member; Advisory Committee of the Federation of German Scientists, member; also member of its Working Group on agriculture and biodiversity. She has contributed to the Work of the German Consumer Testing Group for 20 years in different functions promoting the inclusion of environmental criteria; and was member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Consumer and Food Policy of the German Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection co-authoring its Guidelines for Sustainable Consumption

3. Trainings in Caucasus/CA

Three trainings on advanced sustainable sanitation were held in Georgia, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan in the frame of the ELA program. The trainings included the following topics:

• Improvement of cost efficiency and quality of urine diverting toilet systems
• Construction of the EMAS pump and reservoir
• Construction of a simplified greywater filter.

During the implementation year of 2008, 2545 people in households and 6414 in schools have been provided with safe sanitation by WECF and the partners in the frame of the ELA program. This is just a drop of the ocean given the 43 million people in the EECCA region that do not have access to safe sanitation. Therefore, the main question during the training was, “How can we build a safe UD toilet which can easily be replicated?”. In a brainstorm, the participants identified that the toilet should be cheap, maintenance friendly and without any produce smell.

48 Ecosan practitioners from Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia participating in the ELA program came together and used participative tools to facilitate knowledge exchange among them and the expert from the Technical University of Hamburg. The technical details were discussed using the pictures and schemes of different construction options. The recommendations for cost effective and qualitative urine diverting toilet systems were formulated on each component of toilet construction in different conditions.

It turned out that construction costs and construction approaches considerably differed among the organizations in EECCA countries and knowledge exchange was acknowledged to be very useful.

Besides the knowledge exchange, the participants also learned new technologies. WECF staff has been trained by the EMAS international (www.emas-international.de) on making reservoirs and hand pumps from locally available materials. The reservoir can be used to store a bigger amount of urine, which can be pumped by the hand pump to fields by tubes over a distance of up to 1 km. This improves the maintenance friendliness of toilets because the frequency of handling urine is reduced and the urine can be applied in the growing season.

A simplified grey water filter was built by the participants to treat hand washing water.

4. Change in the Composition of the ELA Team

With regret we announce that the ELA team will in future lack the co-coordinator Toos van Oers. Toos has left WECF. We would like to thank her for the many good contributions she has made, both to building up the team and giving it structures and procedures, as well as to the content of trainings WECF could provide on sustainable agriculture. Unfortunately, her position will not be replaced.

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