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March 2025 Sanitation Workers Research Awards 2025- Applications open till 2nd May 2025

@ WaterAid/ Saiyna Bashir

March 2025 Sanitation Workers Research Awards 2025- Applications open till 2nd May 2025

The Water Institute at UNC and the Initiative for Sanitation Workers are pleased to invite submissions for the fifth edition of the Sanitation Workers Research Awards, to be presented at the 2025 UNC Water and Health Conference.

Sanitation workers – including pit emptiers, sewer workers, and others involved in faecal waste management – provide an essential public service. Often invisible, unquantified, and ostracized, they lack employment security and are exposed to serious health and safety hazards risking illness, injury, or even death. Sanitation workers are key to achieving SDG 6.2 and deserve more recognition, attention, and policy and regulatory reforms aimed at safeguarding their rights. We hope that this award will encourage greater evidence building on these issues and in collaboration with sanitation workers organisations. Read about the 2024 Sanitation Workers Research Awards winners here and the abstracts of the past winners here. Read about the 2024 Sanitation Workers Research Awards winners here and the blogs written by the past winners.

As part of this special call, the Water Institute at UNC and the Initiative for Sanitation Workers (ISW: WaterAid, World Bank, SNV Netherlands Development Organization, World Health Organization, and International Labor Organization) will present awards for the: 

  1. Best Original Research Abstract
  2. Best Published Paper (since 1 May 2024)

We welcome submissions on the health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers (those engaged in faecal waste management), including but not limited to the following areas: 

  • Health and safety
  • Labor rights, wages, working conditions, access to social security, formalisation
  • Livelihoods, rehabilitation
  • Social challenges - caste/ethnic identity, social discrimination, exclusion
  • Gender dimensions, disparities, intersectionality
  • Policies, regulation, standard operating procedures and enforcement
  • Interventions to support sanitation workers- good practices and learnings

 

Prizes

Winners in each category will receive an award certificate, and a cash award of $1000 USD. The runner-up in each category will receive an award certificate and a cash award of $300 USD.

 

Guidelines for submission

  1. Submit your entry using the abstract submission form. Specify 'Sanitation Workers' as the research category and if you want to be considered for the Award, select ‘Yes, I want my abstract to be considered for Sanitation Workers Research Awards’. Select 'Verbal Presentation' in the Preferred Presentation type. Visit the Abstract portal for suggestions and resources on writing a successful abstract.
  2. If you are applying for the Best Published Paper award, please mention this and add the publication link in the abstract. 
  3. For the purpose of this announcement, ’sanitation workers’ refers to those directly involved in the management of faecal waste along the sanitation service chain. Submissions around other categories of work such as solid waste management will not be considered for the awards.

See the website for more information on the UNC Water & Health Conference . Submissions are due by May 2, 2025.

Please email waterinstitute@unc.edu with any questions.

Evaluation process

The evaluation for these awards is done through a two-step process.

  1. The Water and Health Conference undertakes a double-blinded peer review for all the abstracts (not limited to the awards) submitted for the conference.
  2. The top-ranked abstracts around Sanitation Workers are then evaluated by a panel of researchers, academics and policy experts working on this subject. This process is led independently by the Initiative for Sanitation Workers. The evaluation criteria are:
    • well defined research or learning objectives
    • appropriate and sound methods, described clearly
    • clear learnings/practical recommendations which are derived from evidence, and/or practical experiences
    • contribution to the knowledge gap and potential impact to improve the rights of sanitation workers.