The Shelter Academy is a capacity development programme and partnership between UN-Habitat and Arcadis, designed to support city leaders and urban planners in developing innovative solutions to address urban challenges, with a focus on creating sustainable, resilient and inclusive cities. It aims to empower cities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).
Taking place annually, the Shelter Academy 2024 edition focused on strengthening UN-Habitat partners in Ukraine with a three-day workshop on 8-11 December in Krakow, Poland, hosted on the premises of Kraków Water. Several municipalities, oblasts (regions), territorial communities and vodokanals (operators) were represented: Drohobych, Kryvyi Rih, Borodianka Settlement Council of Kyiv Oblast, Truskavets territorial community, Lviv Oblast/Stryi City territorial community, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Kyiv Oblast/Bucha district, Makariv settlement and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and City of Kryvyi Rih.
Based on a learning needs survey among participants, the workshop started with a session on EU norms and standards for water and sanitation, with interventions from experts from the European Water Association and Aqua Publica Europea. Investment planning and funding, as well as infrastructure master planning were other crucial topics covered by experts from Krakow Water, UNICEF Ukraine country office, UN-Habitat, Mikolaiv Water Hub and Arcadis, with case studies, allowing participants to learn from successful projects globally and apply these lessons to their local contexts. A site visit of the state-of-the-art Krakow wastewater treatment plant and one-on-one exchanges with experts concluded the workshop.
Given the Ukraine WOP projects in collaboration with UNICEF Ukraine country office, GWOPA was closely involved in the 2024 Shelter Academy and introduced opportunities for global networking through the Global WOPs Community, where academy participants can continue to network and collaborate beyond the in-person training.