WASH-RAG at the Rotary European Action Summit, Rotterdam

This post is part 6 of 23 in the newsletter of October 2026

By S.N. Srikanth – Chair, WASH-RAG

I attended the Rotary European Action Summit held in Rotterdam from 11-13 Sept 2026. WASH-RAG had a booth there which attracted a good number of visitors. A WASH-RAG Action Conference & Dinner was also organized on the evening of Sept 11 at the Postillion Hotel, Rotterdam. The speakers were excellent and the audience was a very well informed and highly interested one.

I would like to congratulate our Regional Coordinator, Dilip Mirchandani, who worked very hard to make our presence at the Action Summit a success and so too our Board member, Bas Hendriksen.

Meeting with IHE Delft and RI President Yinka

Thanks to Bas, we also had a detailed meeting at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, the largest International graduate water education facility in the world. We met the Operations Director Han de Groot and his colleagues and discussed various areas of possible cooperation between WASH-RAG and IHE Delft. These included sending scholars to IHE and conducting educational programs jointly by IHE and WASH-RAG with certificates issued in both our names.

We also discussed the help that IHE can offer with our ‘3 Districts Initiative’ which they were very interested in.

At the IHE we were invited to join a pre-arranged meeting with Rotary International President Yinka Babalola, Secretary General John Hewko, Rotary International Directors Dr Harriette Verwey and Emmanuel Katongole and a few others. We elaborated on our vision of WASH-RAG as the pre-eminent vehicle not only in Rotary but also the world at large to achieve SDG6. President Yinka was interested in discussing this further. General Secretary John Hewko will shortly connect with me on Zoom.

Meeting with Rotary Club H2O

That brings us to an important point : we could promote more theme based WASH clubs. They could be key partners for us in helping us achieve our goals. We could also look at admitting clubs and not just individuals as members.

Please see pictures of the WASH-RAG Booth and Conference and the meeting with IHE / President Yinka. I would like to thank Gunes Ertas, our cadre member and Ambassador for covering the former event and posting on social media.

Finally, I would like to encourage the members of the Board and Operations Team to participate in the various Rotary Institutes and District Conferences around the world.