Bridging the water

Training in Durban
From September 24 to October 4 we, Hans Mollen and Melanie Nuchelmans, traveled to Durban as part of the Orange Knowledge Project. We are both employed at the Dutch Water board “Waterschap Brabantse Delta”, respectively as senior process engineer and process engineer. The reason for our trip was the OKP project “Bridging the water”, the project to (in this case) build a bridge between the theory and the practice of wastewater  treatment.

We have offered the two-day training course “Basics of waste water treatment” in Durban to 2 groups of 20 (senior) process controllers from various wastewater treatment plants of EWS (Ethekwini Water and Sanitation). We have experienced how motivated, enthusiastic, curious, and eager the participants taking part in the training were. It was amazing to share our knowledge and practical experience with our South African colleagues, in an interactive way. It has led to knowledge sharing, interesting discussions, the provision of new information and finally the issueing of 40 certificates. The enthusiasm of the participants, the atmosphere and the demand for new learning objectives and even more information makes us look back very positively on our visit. We think it is definitely worth repeating, and we are willing to give this training in other places also.  It would be nice to help the new trainers in South Africa on their way so that they can regularly give this training themselves in the future.

It was a very positive experience we would not have wanted to miss and in which we,  as well as our South African colleagues, learned a lot. We hope we have closed part of the gap between theory and practice in the South African water sector. And that we can help to make the gap even smaller in the future.

Training in Cape Town
From november 10th until november 21th we, Melanie and Hans, travelled again to South Africa. We developed a module of the advanced course Wastewater Treatment in Durban in the context of the Orange Knowledge Project. We developed the module “Nutrient Removal and Sludge Treatment” together with people from Ethekwini Water and Sanitation and World Water Academy.

Thereafter we delivered the course Basics of Wastewater Treatment in Cape Town for a group of 17 participants on the WWTP Borcherds Quarry. It was a very eager and enthusiast group of students who, after two days of training, passed their informal assesment with flying colors.

For us it was, again, an amazing experience to share our knowledge with such friendly and motivated colleagues on the other side of the world.