Lotte Dijkstra (22) is the former Sexual and Reproductive and Health Rights (SRHR) Youth ambassador of the Netherlands. The position she held until September 2016 is part of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Sanne Thijssen will take up the torch as the new SRHR Youth Ambassador, while Lotte will continue her work on SRHR as a member of CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality, one of Simavi’s coalition partners in the SRHR Alliance.

Dr. Noor is Executive Director of the Population Services and Training Center (PSTC) in Bangladesh, one of Simavi’s implementing partners for the Unite for Body Rights (UBR) programme. At the end of September 2016, he hosted the visit of Lilianne Ploumen, Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, to UBR. We talked to him about this visit and UBR in general .

In support of women’s right to safe abortion, September 28th 2016 is marked as the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion. We talked to Women’s Promotion Centre (WPC) about it. WPC is one of Simavi’s local partners in Tanzania working on women’s rights, including sexual and reproductive rights.

Léo Heller is UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.  In May 2016, he invited a group of experts,  including one of Simavi’s Programme Officers, to take part in an expert consultation on ‘Gender equality in the realisation of the human rights to water and sanitation’.  This provided input to his annual report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2016. We spoke to him about his focus on gender dimensions in realising the human right to water and sanitation.

Pauline Eenhoorn is Simavi’s Director Communication & Fundraising. Her team was in the lead for the 2015 annual reporting process which resulted in a top 4 nomination of the Transparency Prize.  The winner will be announced on September 28. We spoke with Pauline about this nomination.

Roel Blesgraaf is Simavi’s Public Affairs Officer WASH. At the end of this month he will attend World Water Week in Stockholm (august 28- september 2), the most important water issues event in the year.  Prior to his visit, we talked with him about the right to water and sanitation and the Sustainable Development Goals.

 Samwel Jakinda is the Programme Manager of Neighbours Initiative Alliance (NIA), one of Simavi’s local partner organisations in Kajiado, Kenya. NIA is one of over 100 partners worldwide that we work together with in the WASH Alliance International to accelerate WASH and realise sustainable access to water and sanitation for everyone.

Mr. Stephen J. Kiberiti is the Head of water safety, food safety and environmental sanitation of the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, elderly and children of Tanzania. We spoke to Mr. Kiberti at the 6^th African Water Week, 18 – 22 July 2016 in Dar es Salaam, where we questioned him about WASH in Health and why this is such an important issue.