The 10th Anniversary OU International WaTER Conference Banquet and University of Oklahoma International Water Prize Award Ceremony took place Tuesday evening, September 19 from 6:30-9 pm at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
During this event, Eric Stowe was awarded the 2017 OU International Water Prize and then joined with the four past prize winners to celebrate the anniversary of the WaTER Conference and Water Prize cycle.
The WaTER Center at the University of Oklahoma celebrated the 10th anniversary of the OU International WaTER Conference and the International Water Prize. The conference and award ceremony was held Sept. 18-20, 2017 in Norman, OK, USA.
Making the 2017 conference all the more exciting was the fact that, in honor of our first decade of conferences / Water Prize recipients, our first four prize winners were brought back as well to celebrate our fifth prize winner, all presenting during the conference and participating in a panel discussion. Eric Stowe gave the plenary address, followed by a panel discussion of current water, sanitation and hygiene issues with Stephen Luby (2009), Ben Fawcett (2011), Ada Oko-Williams (2013) and Peter Lochery (2015).
Nearly 200 people joined this informative and grand gathering of stellar international WaSH professionals and caring individuals who celebrated clean water and our healthy world. The two-day conference included poster and concurrent oral presentation sessions devoted to all technical and non-technical topics and sectors (e.g., science, engineering, health, anthropology, sociology, business, meteorology, geography, education and cultural issues) relevant to water and sanitation in remote regions of developing countries.
Sunday evening (9/17) - Registration and Opening Welcome Reception
Monday (9/18) - Registration, Welcome and Opening Session, keynote addresses, concurrent sessions, Poster Session and Social/Poster Contest, K-12 Clean Water Contest ceremony, Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony
Tuesday (9/19) - Registration, keynote addresses, concurrent sessions, Closing Ceremony, Plenary speech/Prize Award Banquet.
Wednesday (9/20) - Post-conference workshops and tours
Thursday (9/21) - Select Post-Conference workshops final day
Ned Breslin
Former CEO of Water for People
Sarina Prabasi
CEO of WaterAid America
Afreen Siddiqi
Professor at MIT and Harvard
James Smith
Professor at University of Virginia
Eric Wood
Professor at Princeton University
Eric Stowe is the Founder and CEO of Splash, a nonprofit organization that’s bringing safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs to over 400,000 children living in urban poverty across Asia and Africa every day. Splash’s work focuses extensively on bringing the resources of public, private and social sectors together to create scaled and lasting models of WASH success across some of the world’s largest and poorest cities.
He has worked in the international NGO sector for the last 15 years and is much-watched for his leadership in international development, transparency practices, and business-approaches to solving conditions of poverty. Since 2007, Mr. Stowe’s NGO has been spearheading a new model for international development—one that challenges the way the WASH sector thinks about transparency, philanthropy, collaboration and impact.
Mr. Stowe’s ideas have been shared through publications in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Forbes, CS Monitor, Wired, and more. Today, Mr. Stowe manages his growing organization of 70+ international staff from Seattle, Washington.
Eric was awarded the prestigious University of Oklahoma International Water Prize at the OU International WaTER Conference banquet.
As a way of celebrating the special nature of the upcoming Conference - our Ten-Year Anniversary Conference - the OU WaTER Center was proud to host its first Student Poster Competition, open to all undergraduate and graduate students working in the field of water, sanitation and health (WaSH) for developing regions.
A panel of judges, composed of past International Water Prize winners, judged the posters on i) clarity of presentation, ii) creativity, and iii) relevance of research. The poster contest winners received cash prizes and were recognized at the final Awards ceremony.
