Note from the editors

Dear Readers, lots of news...

This newsletter should be reporting about the local situation in selected countries, ideally from the viewpoint of an Ecological Engineer about topics of interest to the community. The article by Nadia El-Awady on the problems with wastewater in Egypt is a good example for such a report - so good that it received the WASH Media Award 2004 for it by WSSCC, awarded to her at the Global WASH forum in Dakar, a week ago.

Inspired by this excellent article, I got in touch with Mrs. El-Awady, editor of the Health and Science section of IslamOnline.net, and entered into an informal agreement with her. We are now allowed to republish their articles as long as the name of the author of any article, and IslamOnline.net, are mentioned clearly as the original owners. The agreement is mutual so that our authors may find their articles republished in IslamOnline.net. If this ever happens, the reach of our writers will be drastically increased.

Before entering this informal agreement, I of course checked the website of IslamOnline. Yes, it has a religious focus, as the name implies. In my view, the tone and style is rather moderate and I believe that there is a good basis for cooperation. For all of you working in Islamic countries it may be really interesting to have a deeper look into IslamOnline. It will certainly be essential for your work to know, e.g., what Islam has to say about the recycling and reuse of water.

The future of this newsletter will depend largely on how up to date and how relevant the information we publish is for you. I strongly believe that good language and good journalistic work is a cornerstone of this. Therefore I want to have one or two reports by professional or semi-professional journalists in any future issue of this newsletter.

In order to achieve this goal, we need a scarce, yet precious resource: money. For "only" 50 US$ (which compares to almost a month's salary in many developing countries) we can help local technical writers to do some on-site research and write an article on an issue interesting for the community. Like, e.g., ecovillages, wetland in tropical countries, aquacultures and how they can be combined with industry, biogas or permaculture issues, the performance and acceptance of Ecosan projects, the wastewater situation in a country, and and and ....

Dear readers, please support our work by donating 20, 30 or 50 US$ to our new writer's fund. The fund has been opened for supporting young technical writers in developing countries to do work for our newsletter. Because "journalists can make a difference in the fight to provide water and sanitation for all" - the prevailing message of a three day workshop for African journalists at the latest Global WASH forum (see related article).

IEES members can have a deeper look at the changes ahead in the minutes of the last board meeting of Sep. 2004. You will receive the password with a separate mail. If you haven't received it, please contact me.

Andreas Schoenborn

EcoEng-Newsletter editors