152 students from 36 countries receive their Master diploma

This year, a total of 153 participants representing 36 different nationalities were awarded a Master of Science in Water Engineering and Infrastructure. They faced months of hard work, multidisciplinary approaches and international case studies. They responded to all these challenges with enthusiasm and courage.

The Director of UNESCO-IHE, Richard Meganck, opened the festivities and congratulated the participants on their achievements: “As is clear to all of you, this has been much more than a formal education. You have learned much more than modeling techniques or engineering principles, more than development policies or water treatment technologies. You have grown in ways that you don’t even recognize now”, he addressed the graduates. “It will hit you at some unplanned, even obscure moment in the future. You will flash back to Delft and this Institute and you will realise you have got the tools to solve that problem”.

Kabanda Philbert, an environmental engineer from Rwanda, is now a Master graduate in Environmental Science. He leaves an extensive group of friends, but he is looking forward to going back to his position at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. “I will consider following a PhD programme in four or five years, but now I am eager to pass on so much knowledge and experience to students in my country”, he said.

Anoja Sriyani Kaluarachchi, from Sri Lanka, has mix feeling about going back home. She is very happy and proud holding her Master Diploma in environmental Science and Technology, but she will miss “friends, Dutch cheese and snow”. She returns to her position at the National Water Supply and Drainage Board Ratmalana, where she will be responsible for improving water services by the national utility.

Students agreed that the most valuable and tangible product of their experience here at UNESCO-IHE is the network of professional colleagues both, fellow participants as well as staff and faculty of this Institute.

Now returning home after months away, they will keep working hard to ensure that their countries benefit from the progresses they have made.