Regional GIZ Urban Nexus, Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) and ICLEI South Asia jointly organised an Urban Nexus Training on 25th and 26th February 2019 in Pune. The event was organised under the framework of the Regional GIZ “Integrated resource management in Asian Cities: Urban Nexus” project.

It was financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented jointly with ICLEI SA in India. The first training session was held last year in New Delhi, in cooperation with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), GIZ Urban Nexus and ICLEI SA.

Based on the success of the first event and the response of the participants, the subsequent Urban Nexus trainings reached out to a large number of administrative training institutions and cities. Ruth Erlbeck, Project Director, said, “Training institutes are innovation hubs engaged in research and training; students, trainers and professors being natural multipliers dealing with young people, i.e., the generation of tomorrow.”

More than 30 participants from training institutes and cities actively engaged in urban infrastructure problems such as air pollution, waste water and solid waste management at the training. Methods such as selection and definition of factors (political, economic, social and technological, besides environmental and legal) that cause major challenges, influence matrix and the Nexus approach enabled the trainees to elaborate on practical and cross-sectoral solutions for the problems. The workshop highlighted the importance of strong inter-institutional linkages at all levels of the government through role play.

In Delhi, more than 50 people from training and research institutes and cities in the country participated in the training organised on 28th February and 1st March 2019. The diversity of the participants resulted in very intense engagement and discussions on the development of possible multi-sectoral, inter-institutional and coordinated solutions based on key elements of the design thinking method. The trainings were conducted by Rupert Prossinagg and Désirée Bösemüller from well-known German organisation Denkmodell GmbH. All the participants received a certificate at the end of their training.