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Watershed Workshop at Generate/Navigate
AWC-WPAC, Events, and Friday Read | April 2023

Ashley Johnson, Education and Outreach Coordinator

In March, I was invited to host a WPAC workshop for Inside Education’s youth conference focused on water and energy, Generate/Navigate. The youth conference included 20 schools from across Alberta and northeast BC for their 12th annual in-person Youth Environmental Leadership Summit. This year, the conference took place in Canmore. 

The summit brought together 160 students and teachers and over 70 expert guests to advance energy, water and climate education. Part of Inside Education’s programming involved inviting other organizations to conduct hands-on sessions, workshops and tours! 

I hosted a WPAC–themed workshop during the morning of March 18th to teach students about some of the on-the-ground projects that WPACs do, and ways they collaborate with local communities and stewardship groups. 

The students were divided into groups to work through scenarios to teach them about WPAC work like riparian restoration, beaver co-existence, and stream crossing remediation. I hope that all the students were able to remember a little bit about what we as WPACs do across Alberta following the workshop! 

I wouldn’t have been able to facilitate the workshop without help from some phenomenal volunteers from the Bow River Basin Council’s Young Professionals Committee and a volunteer from the Athabasca Watershed Council as well as help from Inside Education’s Laura Pekkola! 

During the afternoon, I tagged along with some of the school groups to check out Living Lakes Canada’s outdoor session, and accompanied Laura on her afternoon session which was a riparian assessment walk along the bank of the Bow River.  

At the end of the conference, the schools each had to complete an action plan for a project to bring back to their communities. I stuck around for long enough to introduce myself to the four phenomenal schools from the Athabasca watershed to let them know that the AWC is happy to promote and potentially collaborate with their schools to help implement the great projects they have planned. 

All in all, it was a great weekend, and I hope to be able to collaborate with Inside Education again in the future!