Before the award ceremony, students from Turkey and South Africa were invited by Evi Hoch (member of the Executive Board of the Wilo-Foundation) to an event hosted by the Wilo Foundation where they were given a warm welcome by Evi Hoch and learned more about the foundation’s social funding activities. Afterwards, technical experts of the Wilo Group gave the students a guided tour of the trade fair stand and shared their insights from the water sector. The event was also attended by two Germany Scholarship holders from the “Sustainable Water Management” master’s programme at Hof University.

The key objective of the University Challenge is to promote young water management engineers from China (Shanghai), India (Mumbai), South Africa (Johannesburg) and Turkey (Istanbul). In order to give the winning teams from these countries the opportunity to participate in the biennial DWA World University Challenge as part of the Munich IFAT, the Wilo-Foundation has been sponsoring their airfares and participation fees since 2016. Unfortunately, the team from India was unable to come to Munich this year due to visa issues. For the first time, IFAT Brasil, too, organised a University Challenge with 8 participating this year. The winners will also be attending IFAT 2026 in Munich with financial support from the Wilo-Foundation.