Plumbing Africa January 2020 | Page 29

HEALTH AND SANITATION “We see plumbing, and the plumbing profession, as being crucial to protecting and sustaining public health and safety. Wherever you may be in the world, quality plumbing skills and professional practices help ensure safe water supply and sanitation which, today, must be considered a fundamental human right.” toilet and wash facilities for the children of Derbyshkinskiy Orphanage. “Our Community Plumbing Challenge programme is run in different countries around the world,” Kearney says. “We design and build toilets, washing facilities, new water supplies and sanitation systems in collaboration with different communities in need. All the while we are promoting the plumbing profession and highlighting the cool and exciting opportunities for WorldSkills Champions to travel and share their skills to help make a difference for people who need it most.” “Everything was ready by end of the final day of WorldSkills Kazan 2019, and then shipped across town to Derbyshkinskiy, where a team — including a group of local students and a teacher from the Kazan Construction College — spent two days installing them in renovation of the existing toilet and washrooms. In all, there were around 20 people working on site at the orphanage over the two days.” 27 The following article looks at the 45th WorldSkills Competition, which was recently held in Kazan, Russia, courtesy WorldSkills International. Written by IAPMO Staff Writer, Mike Flenniken, it is the next in a regular series of similar articles that run in Plumbing Africa. You can learn more about IAPMO at: http://iapmo.org/ Kearney stresses that IAPMO was thankful to many different people and companies with whom it collaborated to achieve the Plumbing and Heating Champions Project; in particular, fellow WorldSkills global partners 3M, Autodesk, and DHL. As a global partner of WorldSkills, the project was very important to IAPMO, which sees water, sanitation, and hygiene advocacy as central to its mandate, which the developing relationship with WorldSkills facilitates. Learn more about IAPMO’s charitable arm, the IWSH Foundation at: www.iapmo.org/iwsh Submit your details and be the first to receive news, updates and invitations for new international Community Plumbing Challenge projects at: https://commplumbing. org/interest/ PA “We see plumbing, and the plumbing profession, as being crucial to protecting and sustaining public health and safety,” he says. “Wherever you may be in the world, quality plumbing skills and professional practices help ensure safe water supply and sanitation which, today, must be considered a fundamental human right. The International Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Foundation (IWSH) is the charitable arm of The IAPMO Group and the platform through which the organisation’s philanthropic and community-based programmes are delivered (including the Community Plumbing Challenge, which was originally developed during IAPMO’s Trusteeship of WorldSkills Foundation, 2013-15). These projects have provided ongoing opportunities for WorldSkills Champions to further their personal and professional skills development pathways ever since. January 2020 Volume 25 I Number 11 “IAPMO looks at the big picture, and we see the plumber as akin to a healthcare professional. When these skills and services are present in the community, then in turn this can help protect and provide reliable water supply for drinking, cooking and cleaning, provide toilets, provide the ability to wash and encourage better hygiene, provide safe drainage and wastewater disposal, and safeguard all the things connected to good sanitation and health and safety.” www.plumbingafrica.co.za