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Inside this Issue
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I’ve recently returned from France, where—as a member of the World Water Council—I met with 400 other experts from 50 countries. We were there to make plans for the 6th World Water Forum, coming up in March 2012 in the French port city of Marseilles. The Project WET Foundation is playing a leadership role in convening the Forum’s work around water education, and the role we are playing recognizes our successful involvement in the Water Education & Capacity Building activities at the Fifth World Water Forum in Turkey. We are pleased to be involved and will hope to see some of you in Marseilles next March.
We are also pleased that our upcoming Sustaining the Blue Planet: Global Water Education Conference is a lead-up event to the 6th World Water Forum. With sponsorships from Nestle Waters and UN Habitat and the involvement of the members of Project WET’s global network, the September 13-16, 2011 event is expected to attract as many as 400 to 500 participants. You can learn more about the conference later in this newsletter or by visiting the conference homepage. We are excited to put water education in the global spotlight.
Whether in Montana, Marseilles or elsewhere, we would love to hear what makes water education important to you. You can send in a presentation proposal for the conference, interact with us on social media or simply give us a call. Your feedback is important to us.
Sincerely,
Dennis Nelson
President & CEO
Project WET Foundation
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What: Sustaining the Blue Planet: Global Water Education Conference
When: September 13-16, 2011
Where: Bozeman, Montana (USA)
To register or learn more: Visit the Sustaining the Blue Planet conference webpage
(http://www.projectwet.org/blueplanet)
The first conference to focus exclusively on water education and its role in solving the world's pressing water issues, the Sustaining the Blue Planet: Global Water Education Conference will offer five conference strands, a full array of speakers, the much-anticipated launch of Project WET's Curriculum & Activity Guide 2.0, pre- and post-conference workshops, pre-conference field trips and dedicated networking opportunities...all within easy reach of some of the best fishing, hiking, biking and other outdoor recreation anywhere.
The five planned strands are:
- Innovations in Water Education: How is water education being used in new and more effective ways in schools and communities?
- Successful Approaches to WASH Education: How are effective program models and innovative partnerships in WASH education resulting in behavior changes and local solutions?
- Technology & Water Education: What are ways that technology can be used to expand the scope and reach of water education and to assist in solving water issues?
- Encouraging Water Education in Corporate Sustainability: How are corporations using employee education and training to promote personal sustainability practices and business goals while helping employees effectively and credibly tell their company’s water and sustainability story through strategic interaction with schools, communities and other key local, national and global stakeholders? How can corporate giving support educational programs that lead to meaningful results and actions?
- Education Solutions for Priority Water Topics: What are the most successful methods for addressing the most important water challenges of the day, including: Risk (drought and floods); Watersheds; Ground water; Water and health, including water, sanitation and hygiene; Storm water; Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in water; Weather, Climate and Change; Water and energy; Water conservation.
Proposal presentations — click here to download the Call for Proposals — will be accepted through March 31, 2011, and registration is open NOW. Reserve your space today to attend the premiere water education event of the year.
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Aggrey Oluka was fed up with his students getting sick. The head science teacher at Lake Victoria Primary School in Entebbe, Uganda, Oluka had watched in horror as the population of the school plummeted from more than 2,000 to just 400 in the wake of a devastating 2007 cholera epidemic. And cholera was far from the only problem. Students at LVPS frequently visited the school's health clinic-often with stomach ailments-and missed school due to largely preventable illnesses. Oluka was determined to look for ways to improve the situation.
He found that way through Project WET, and in November, he was named the 2010 AMCOW Grassroots Champion Award runner-up. Click here to find out how Mr. Oluka worked with Project WET to improve the health of his students and, along the way, propelled his school into becoming the first-ever Project WET Healthy Habits Model School.
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Arizona’s Casa Grande Dispatch newspaper recently published a feature on the School Water Audit Program, a joint effort of Arizona Project WET, volunteers from Abbott Nutrition and the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. The program aims to, in the words of one of the School Water Audit curriculum developers, “empower students to become change agents in their schools and to make real and substantial changes in their school’s water use.” The program also allows for real-world application of academic subjects, teacher Jerry Freed explained to Dispatch reporter Susan Randall:
"The nice thing about the school water audit program, Freed said, is that students learn about water conservation, scientific inquiry, math and language arts all woven together. They don’t realize they are using algebra. They just solve problems and end up using algebra. In this case, it is tied to hands-on activities with real-world consequences — and they are learning it in small, easy steps."
Click here to read the entire article.
To see other places where Project WET is cropping up in the media, visit our Media Coverage page.
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Discover the Waters of Nebraska and Discover the Waters of Tennessee are the latest children’s activity booklets published in the award-winning Project WET Kids in Discovery Series (KIDs). All are available in the Project WET Store.
Discover the Waters of Nebraska invites readers to spend a day as a Nebraska farmer, investigate a tornado through the story of a storm researcher and travel the "Flyway Highway" as a Sandhill Crane while learning about Nebraska's many water wonders. The colorful, 24-page activity booklet teaches children seven to 12 years old where water comes from, how we use it, how to conserve and protect it and the relationships between weather, climate and water-all in a fun and interactive way.
Discover the Waters of Tennessee allows children to learn through a series of fun, engaging activities. While participating, they discover what ordinary people can do to help keep the state’s waters extraordinary, including a strong emphasis on water conservation and everyday ways to reduce pollution. The booklet also highlights some of the remarkable “water places” across the state, including a lake created by a series of earthquakes and an ancient watering hole filled with fossils. |
 Project WET is proud be partnering with Rain Bird Corporation on the Intelligent Use of Water Awards program, a grant program that will provide more than $50,000 in grants to water-efficient projects that need funding.
The Intelligent Use of Water Awards allows anyone with access to the Internet to upload a water conservation project to the interactive website and add descriptions, photos and videos about the project. Anyone can anonymously vote on these projects on a daily basis until March 2011. The projects with the most votes in their funding category ($1,500, $5,000, or $10,000) will receive funding, and winners will be announced on World Water Day, March 22, 2011.
Visit the IUOWA website today to learn more or to upload your own project. And good luck! If you do upload a project, share it with us on Facebook! We’d love to help one of our subscribers win a grant.
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Click On a Name Below to Contact a Project WET Foundation Staff Member:
- Dennis Nelson, President and CEO
- John Etgen, Senior Vice President
- Meg Long, Chief Financial Officer
- Sandra DeYonge, Vice President of Publications
- Linda Hveem, Executive Assistant to the President and CEO
- Lindsay Lemon, Bookkeeper
- Dr. Laurina Lyle, Executive Director and National Network Coordinator, Project WET USA
- Theresa Schrum, Assistant to Project WET USA Executive Director
- Molly Ward, Project Manager
- Julia Nelson, Project Manager, Latin America
- Kristen Read, Publications Manager
- Verna Schaff, Accountant
- Erin Vait, Sales Manager
- Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter, Communication Specialist
- Morgan Perlson, International Projects Assistant
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Contact the Project WET Foundation at:
+01-406-585-2236 | 1-866-337-5486 | www.projectwet.org | info@projectwet.org
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