Gather’s 2021 Thought Leadership Round Up
2021 has been a busy and innovative year here at Gather! This year, Gather has had amazing opportunities to present and share our work throughout the sanitation, development and tech sectors. As we head into a new year, we wanted to share our highlights of Gather’s Thought Leadership for 2021.
January 2021 — Sanitation and Data: A Power Couple
We started off the year strong and joined Busara, Flush, Laura Mugeha and Splash, for an informal conversation about strengthening and standardizing data practices across the hygiene and sanitation sector. The panel talked about the importance of data standards, location data in WASH, data sharing and adapting tools and interventions for different contexts.
To read more on this panel conversation, read FLUSH’s blog post and their key takeaways.
March 2021 — Data Diversity: Representation, Insight and Transformation
In March, Raheema facilitated our panel conversation with our global panel, Sharon Omoja, Poulomy Chakraborty and Elliot Abra on how to make public sector data more inclusive for Digital Leader’s Insight Week. In this conversation, the key takeaways were:
· Ensuring a multidisciplinary approach, prioritising experts in issues within gender, race, class and others.
· Data practitioners need to have a comprehensive understanding of how dynamic and diversified society is
· Ensuring the data collection process is participatory as possible — the communities are the ones who understand their needs
To watch this pivotal discussion in full, you can watch right here.
May 2021 — Decolonising Data: Principles for Improving the Ownership, Diversity and Accessibility of Data
May brought forth more thought-provoking conversations with another global panel — Dr Carmen Leon-Himmelstine, Dr Azzam Abuhabib and Rudo Kemper at the Data4Good Festival. They focused on the significant gap in the data between the Global North and the Global South and explored the possibilities of decolonising data. Raheema also wrote more on this topic for Data4Good Fest, exploring who sets the agenda for research, risks of tech in the development sector and extractive practices, which you can read here.
To listen or watch this discussion in-depth, you can catch it right here.
August 2021 — Using Data to Build Resilient Urban Sanitation
This World Water Week, John joined innovative WASH thinkers from across the world (including India, Kenya, Rwanda and Zambia) to discuss how to use data to build resilient urban sanitation. The session was moderated by GSMA and the Toilet Board Coalition.
September 2021 — Re-centring Local Decision Makers at the Heart of Sanitation Data: Lessons From Antananarivo, Madagascar
This year, we had the fantastic opportunity in presenting at the 42nd WEDC International Conference. Raheema presented on current imbalances in global sanitation data and shared recommendations from our partners in Antananarivo, Madagascar. The main takeaways from this pivotal topic included:
· Actively acknowledging the legacy of colonialism
· Moving beyond traditional research methods
· Inclusive and accessible technology
· Budgetary autonomy
September 2021 — Lessons From Using Geospatial Data to Improve Sanitation for Vulnerable Communities in Antananarivo, Madagascar
Our very own Lieven presented on our lessons from our work in Antananarivo, Madagascar at FOSS4G in September. FOSS4G is the largest global gathering of developers, decision-makers and uses across the geospatial sector. Lieven presented on the main learnings and successes:
· Learning to be patient — Unforeseen circumstances such as the COVID pandemic and building our Sanitation Data Platform (SDP)
· Hitting bottlenecks early in the process
· Communication — through workshops, stakeholders were able to build effective communication with each other
· Effective collaboration — brought stakeholders in one room, encouraging them to build their partnerships outside of our workshops
To watch Lieven’s presentation in full, you can watch it here.
As you can tell, 2021 has been a fantastic year for Gather’s thought leadership and contributing to continual conversations on global imbalance in data, recentring local communities and decision-makers and many others. We want to thank all our panelists for joining our conversations and discussions for 2021. We also want to thank you all for joining in our journey and hope to see you all in 2022 for many more conversations.
Happy holidays from the Gather team!
