Mr. JON LANE IS THE NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION COUNCIL

Kojanews , 5 October 2007 - Mr. Jon Lane has been appointed as the new Executive Director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

According to the council statement , he succeeds Dr. Gourisankar Ghosh, who held the Executive Director position from 2001 to 2006, during which time he contributed largely to fostering the widespread success of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) Campaign. Jon Lane's appointment was formally approved on Thursday ,4 October 2007 by the Director-General of he World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan.

Jon Lane is British and is a Civil Engineer by profession.
He began his career as a consulting engineer in London before moving to international development work.

In the late 1980's Jon Lane worked as country representative in Nepal for WaterAid, one of the world's leading nongovernmental organizations concerned with drinking water and sanitation in developing countries.

Following his stint with WaterAid in Nepal, he was Director of RedR (Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief).

From there, he took the position of Director of WaterAid. Under his leadership, the organization received the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize for outstanding water related activities.

Jon Lane left the London-based NGO in 1999 to work as a senior-level consultant in water and sanitation, primarily for multilateral and bilateral agencies and NGOs, both globally and within Malawi, where he has lived since then. His work during that period mainly involved
strategy, policy and advocacy work.

Additionally, Jon Lane has chaired and been a member of the steering committees of several prominent water and sanitation sector organizations.

Jon Lane has been an active member of WSSCC from its inception, even attending the New Dehli meeting in 1990, where the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council was
created.

He has been involved in some of WSSCC's key milestone moments, including Vision 21, a landmark project that established many of the principles that still guide WSSCC's activities, and the periodical Global Forums, which are meetings to establish priorities, measure progress, and plan for actions within the water and sanitation sector.

In January 2007, Jon Lane accepted the position of Interim Executive Director of WSSCC, to provide leadership to the organization during the transitional period before the appointment
of its Executive Director.

Jon Lane will guide and direct WSSCC's activities through 2008, the International Year of Sanitation, and beyond. His top priorities include:


increasing the number of countries with an active WASH presence - currently that number stands at 36;


expanding WASH advocacy to push for greater global recognition of the importance of safe water supply, adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities;


continuing the knowledge management and thematic networking activities of the WSSCC;


launching a new sanitation grants programme, which is designed to support the scaling-up efforts of sanitation initiatives in developing countries.

After receiving the announcement, Jon Lane asserted "I am honoured to be appointed to this post. I intend to work with all my colleagues in WSSCC around the world to serve people in
developing countries who lack sanitation and water."

According to Dr. Roberto Lenton, the WSSCC Chair, " Jon will bring to the position a deep knowledge of the field, through both his extensive on-the-ground experience in water and sanitation and his work with a broad range of civil society organizations. I greatly look forward to working with him in the years to come."

WSSCC was founded in 1990 in line with a United Nations General Assembly resolution to continue the work of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990), and is since then legally and administratively hosted by the WHO. Its mission is to achieve sustainable water supply and sanitation for all people. Currently, 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion people - nearly half of the world's population, lack access to adequate sanitation.

The Collaborative Council, using the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for water and sanitation as a milestone, aims to ensure that these basic human rights are available to all people.