Dutch water sector reaching out to Indonesia’s future water leaders
(Press release Holland Water Challenge:) Amsterdam/Jakarta, 10 September 2013 - A prominent group of organisations from the Dutch water sector is announcing the first Indonesia-Netherlands Water Challenge. Under the theme Coasts & Ports Indonesia: People, Planet & Profit, the program aims to engage young Indonesian talent with the important challenges of sustainable coast and port development in their country. They will be given the opportunity to contribute their own ideas and develop these together with professional experts from the Dutch partners.
Lead partners of the challenge are Van Oord, BAM International, Deltares and Royal HaskoningDHV. They will each take ownership of a specific topic, related to their area of expertise, and support the student teams to develop and present their ideas.
‘Making young local talent enthusiastic to deal with the issues related to water in Indonesia is of great importance to the future of the country as well as to the corporate sector. The Water Challenge gives multinational companies with strong local roots such as BAM an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and experience with the next generation’, says Laurens Schokking, engineering manager Asia Pacific of BAM International.
The challenge is launched amidst a very dynamic phase of water infrastructure development in Indonesia. Indonesian and Dutch companies and organisations are actively involved in numerous strategic projects such as the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development and Indonesia’s largest container port, Tanjung Priok.
The Indonesia-Netherlands Water Challenge is organised in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesian Netherlands Association (INA), Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), CKNet and UNESCO-IHE.
Further information: Gregor van Essen managing director, Holland Water Challenge, www.hollandwaterchallenge.nl.