Thijs Merton
Young Expert at Aqua for All - Ethiopia
YEP period 2019 - 2021, batch 18
YEP Role
Aqua for All uses grant money to mobilize public and private capital in order to increase in investment in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Africa and Asia. We do this by providing support to innovations, solidifying business cases, removing barriers for funding and making connection with financiers. Aqua for All’s ‘Making Water Count’ program supports innovative ideas or concepts to transform into a solution that has reached proof-of-concept stage as well as solutions or SMEs that are already at proof-of-concept stage or beyond.
As Programme Officer for the Aqua for All Ethiopia office, I support the Ethiopia programme on different levels, employing a focus on PME, microfinance, entrepreneurship, carbon finance and private sector development.
Skills
- Monitoring and Evaluation
- (Micro)finance
- Market-based approaches in WASH
- Intercultural communication
- Carbon credits
- Event management
Nationality: Dutch
Education: MSc Sustainable Development Utrecht University; BSc Media & Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam
Experience before YEP
Before YEP, I was an MSc thesis intern at Aqua for All, focusing my thesis on Outcome Monitoring for attracting Outcome investment. Additionally, I helped organizing two events for VIAWater, a program of Aqua for All that supported early-stage innovations in water and sanitation between 2015 - 2019. For these events, up to 15 VIAWater innovators from Africa were invited to the Netherlands for workshops on business development, leadership, marketing, etc, as well as networking events to meet potential investors and partner organizations. Before Aqua for All, I worked as an English, Dutch, and mathematics teacher at different Dutch vocational (Dutch: MBO) schools.
