Sustainable Sanitation Alliance

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) is a loose network of organizations who are 'working along the same lines towards achieving sustainable sanitation'. It began its work in 2007, one year before the United Nation's International Year of Sanitation in 2008. The intention of creating SuSanA was to have a joint label for the planned activities for 2008 and to align the various organizations for further initiatives. SuSanA has over 340 partner organizations and over 10,000 individual members (as of November 2018). SuSanA's vision document contains a definition of sustainable sanitation which was developed by SuSanA partners in 2007. SuSanA is not an NGO (non-governmental organization). It has no legal structure and takes no membership fees. It encourages other organizations to join the network and to become active members in the thematic working groups. The SuSanA secretariat is funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development which has commissioned the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for this task. Other SuSanA partners make contributions for example by paid time of their staff members. SuSanA is dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular SDG6 (Goal Number 6) which is 'water and sanitation for all'. This is done by promoting sustainable sanitation systems. These systems should be 'economically viable, socially acceptable, technically and institutionally appropriate, and protect health, the environment and natural resources'. SuSanA is one of several knowledge management platform in the WASH sector such as the LinkedIn Discussion Group 'Community of Practice on Sanitation and Hygiene in Developing Countries' by WSSCC, Blue Planet, International Water Association (IWA), Akvopedia and others. Since 2007, SuSanA has held 23 meetings in different locations around the world. Each year one meeting takes place before or after the World Water Week in Stockholm, and a further meeting usually takes place in the Global South, connected to another WASH event. SuSanA also organises side events, seminars and working group meetings in conjunction with other major WASH conferences. SuSanA members are contributing to Wikipedia articles on WASH-related topics. They are particularly active just before two international observance days: World Water Day on 22 March and World Toilet Day on 19 November. They have also set up a list of 'List of abbreviations used in sanitation'.