Innovation Water Week – European Youth Parliament for Water

In the last week of June, Water Europe held for the first time, entirely online, the Innovation Water Week. The event provided online plenary sessions, digital working groups, and online networking opportunities. 

This year’s innovation water week focused on the importance of building a water-smart society for a successful European Green Deal. It directly registers under Europe’s goal of becoming the first climate-neutral continent. For our organization, this event was a great advocacy opportunity to make sure water-related issues are at the core of the Green Deal.  

 

Youth and civil voices 

As part of the first plenary session, the President of our youth network in Europe, Hasmik Barseghyan, had the opportunity to address over 400+ professionals and decision-makers of the water sector. You can find a full recap of day one here. 

The dynamism of young water professionals under our leadership was noted by some of the speakers, notably from Alexandra Serra, from the Portuguese Water Partnership:

‘’ With a huge sense of emergency, we should bring into the sector young professionals, because the crisis is shaping a new mindset. We are engineers but we need new talent and new abilities’’.  

 

 

From June 22 to June 26, 5 plenary sessions were held, with 6 Water Europe award sessions, 2 side events, 16 working groups meetings, over 200 B2B meetings, 15 digital booths, and the Water Europe Annual General Meeting.  

As noted by Hasmik Barseghyanthere are many areas of interest in which youth can be involved and to which they can add meaningful and important contributions. As part of the Water Europe board, our youth network in Europe, the European Parliament for Water, is able to have direct dialogue with key actors and European decision-makers.  

The European branch of our organization has recently joined Water Europe, you can learn more about what this membership entails here.

Thanks to our partners to support our action of mobilization of the youth in Europe; the Water Agency Artois Picardie and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.