Sixteen water professionals returned to their home states in March 2023 to share and apply learnings from the Water Institute’s pilot course, “Water Quality for Climate Adaptation,” following four weeks of intensive training in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan. The Water Institute is the only WASH training center in South Sudan and meets a fundamental need of “training the trainer” - training public sector employees better to manage their own communities’ drinking water quality and to train their employees to do so. In this course, participants learned how water quality affects health, about local challenges to supplying drinking, and how to test water for contaminants. 

This training is vital to supporting a water secure future for South Sudan. As of 2020, 59% of the population had limited, unimproved, or surface-water and drinking water services; 74% practiced open defecation; and only 10.3% used improved sanitation facilities. Each graduate now returns home to their state to apply and share the knowledge they gained. Importantly, because the Water Institute is offered to participants across the country, the Water Institute is intentionally designed as a means of peacebuilding across South Sudan’s diverse religious and ethnic groups. It also was designed with gender equity at heart, with 50% female participation.