Bainbridge Island’s Open Mic Science

Access to water and sanitation may be recognized as human rights – fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity, and prosperity- but billions of people are still living without access to either. Jan Willem spent a few decades of his life working in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) trying to improve this situation. Living and working overseas, he encountered the many complexities involved, ranging from money to technology, behavior, social norms, policies and institutions. He also managed to come down with many of the diseases related to water and sanitation, often more than once.

This presentation will kick off with early insights into the links between WASH and health that emerged from cholera epidemics in London. The remainder will focus on sanitation, as the stepsister of the WASH sector. It will cover options and challenges in low-income settings, informed by Jan Willem’s work in Africa and Asia. A central question in this part will be how we put people at the center of our efforts. The closing chapter will cover Bainbridge’s Magic Toilets and how to plan for continued safe sanitation access post-earthquake.

Jan Willem Rosenboom is a public health engineer with more than 40 years of experience working on water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) with a variety of organizations, including WaterAid, Oxfam, UNICEF, the World Bank and the Gates foundation. His early years in Kenya and Sierra Leone focused on rainwater catchment, gravity water supplies and rural sanitation. In Cambodia and Bangladesh he worked on water quality, household water treatment (including arsenic mitigation) and sanitation marketing. In 2010 Jan Willem moved from Cambodia to Bainbridge, together with his wife and daughter. He joined the Gates foundation, shaping the foundation’s work on rural sanitation delivery and Citywide Inclusive Sanitation. He currently works in an advisory and consulting capacity with several universities and sector agencies.