The Official Blog of Alabama Water Watch
AWW Staff and Volunteer Trainers have started off a strong 2023 Monitoring Training Season with nearly a dozen trainings including recertifications, full certifications, large trainings, and one-on-one sessions for over 170 monitors! Read on for a recap of staff-led trainings!
AWW Program Staffers Mona and Sydney, along with former AWW Director Dr. Bill Deutsch, had a great few days learning and exploring at the 2023 Environmental Education Association of Alabama Conference at Lake Point State Park in Eufaula, AL in early February.
The EEAA Conference was a great opportunity to meet and network with amazing environmental educators across Alabama, and to learn new and exciting ways to teach kids (and adults!) about environmental stewardship. Take a look at a few of the conference highlights below.
Continue reading “AWW @ EEAA 2023”As program coordinators, we can easily get wrapped up in numbers, reporting, and data, which are all vital things to the program, but not the focal point. We are starting off 2023 by re-centering our focus on what really matters, our volunteers! After all, Alabama Water Watch is just as much about people as it is about water. There is no AWW without dedicated volunteers who collect credible water data, educate others in their community about water issues, and advocate locally for protection and restoration of waterways .
Each AWW staff member sincerely cares about each of our Volunteer Monitors, Trainers, Board Members, and project and community partners; however, with such a small staff, it can be difficult to reach out to everyone to let them know they are valued and appreciated.
Monitors who were trained by a Volunteer Trainer or are new to the program may not have met any of us yet. We are a small group of dedicated folks who want to make a difference in Alabama, just like our volunteers.
AWW Staff’s New Year’s Resolution is to prioritize connecting with our volunteers and providing new avenues of support. Read on to see what we are doing in 2023.
Continue reading “AWW Staff’s 2023 New Year’s Resolution”290 monitors were certified or recertified in 2022 by Volunteer Trainers and AWW Staff around Alabama. It’s been a wonderful and busy year!
Over 700 folks completed* our online courses, marking a great first full year of using them for our Monitoring Trainings! *Completion is defined as individuals who completed the entire course with 80% accuracy or above.
Here are some of the highlights from AWW Staff Trainings. 2023 dates are listed at the end of this post and can be found on the AWW Events Calendar.
Continue reading “2022 Workshop Highlights and Looking Forward To 2023”AWW Staffers Mona and Sydney were up in beautiful Florence, AL in early November to train the AWWesome staff from the Lauderdale County Extension Office and a former 4-H AWW student monitor who is now a teacher using AWW with her own students!
On August 19, AWW Staffers Mona and Sydney headed to Prattville to conduct a Water Chemistry and Bacteriological Monitoring Field Day in partnership with Alabama Watershed Stewards (AWS).
Continue reading “AWW Monitoring Training on Autauga Creek!”July 1 marked the midpoint of the year and, as we enter the second half of the year, just in case your New Year’s Resolution was to be very consistent with your Alabama Water Watch monitoring, this is a good point to check out your data. You can make sure all the data you have collected has been entered and is appearing in AWW Water Data.
This is an excellent time to ask yourself how you have progressed towards reaching your monitoring goals. Have you gone out as frequently as you had planned? If you wanted to add a new sampling site, did you do it? If you have not achieved your mid-year goals, take some time to reflect, and consider why, so you can adjust accordingly.
In late July 2022, AWW teamed up with Benjamin Moore Company (yes – the paint people!) to host an Exploring Our Living Streams (EOLS) Educator Workshop to teach educators how to help their students learn about stream biomonitoring and watershed stewardship.
The EOLS workshop was held at Benjamin Moore’s facility in Pell City, Alabama, which included a wonderful outdoor classroom and access to Fishing Creek in the Coosa River Basin.
Read more about the workshop and Benjamin Moore’s environmental education program below!
“Green infrastructure is an approach to water management that protects, restores, or mimics the natural water cycle. They are effective, economical, and enhance community safety and quality of life. It means planting trees and restoring wetlands, rather than building a costly new water treatment plant.” – American Rivers
We were so excited to be back at it again in person! Volunteers, Trainers, AWWA Board Members, past and present AWW Staff, and partners gathered to celebrate 30 Years of Alabama Water Watch and the accomplishments of our volunteers!
Continue reading “Celebrating 30 Years of AWW at the Annual Meeting!”