UPGro co-generation: UPGro has been a catalyst for greater academic rigour and exchange between researchers and practitioners through its thematic and financial inputs to the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) [C1]

The UPGro Knowledge Broker, Skat Foundation, also hosts the Secretariat and leads the Sustainable Groundwater Development theme for the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN), the only global network for rural water supply professionals in low and middle income countries.

This has enabled the work of the Hidden Crisis and Gro for GooD Consortium projects and many of the Catalysts to engage with practitioners and policymakers.

UPGro has shifted the global debate by changing the global Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) from being a practitioner network of 5,000 members in early 2014 to over 12,000 in 2020, with much greater exchange between researchers with practitioners and development partners. The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has become a core RWSN partner and continued collaboration with University of Oxford through REACH.

RWSN also regularly promotes the rural groundwater and WASH research of Mzuzu University, Malawi and regularly mixes academic and practitioner speakers in multi-language webinars.

The 6^th RWSN Forum conference (2011) had 10% submissions from academic researchers and 24% at the 7^th RWSN Forum (2016).

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