Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I’m glad you’re here, and hope that you are preparing for a well-deserved holiday break to refresh for a New Year of challenges in 2023. What a great year we’ve had with our young professionals and their organizations from around Europe working together! Our second group completed their two-year EJWP journey last week in Frankfurt, and we just opened registration for our fifth EJWP group.

Joint participation in our EJWP projects connecting organizations in Europe has helped us share expertise on challenges at a European level. Working throughout the year with all our different partners has helped grow our professional networks and ideas, including in our New Waves Festival 2022 in Brussels that brought a broader range of voices to designing the future water workplace. And we had truly engaging training weeks in Belgium, Greece, and France, along with participation in other EU initiatives!

Our work together is becoming more urgent, with the impacts of climate on water resources coming faster in Europe and around the world. Droughts and temperatures this past summer reminded us that “Our Water Future is Now,” and it is up to all of us to create the right ways of working together, including truly valuing water and cultivating human capital in the workplace.

The EU has designated 2023 as the “European Year of Skills,” and we are excited to be working with partners in Italy to launch EJWP Lombardia in January, and to fine tune leadership strategy with our first group of mid-senior level water officials in the Blue Innovation Track for Advanced Water Leaders development initiative. We’re also reaching as far as possible with related EU projects like WATERLINE, SPIRE SAIS, NEXUSNET, and SMARTEN in development of skills and resilience for all generations.

Thank you to all of our participants, partner organizations, collaborators and friends who continue to help make all of this possible. We believe in people working together across borders to innovate for the good of all. I wish you warmth and happiness in this holiday season, and I look forward to working together in 2023!

Naomi Timmer, Director, EJWP