Community Leadership for Equitable Climate Resilience

Partnering with the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS), Defensores de la Cuenca expanded AWS’s  Watershed Stewards Academy  to include a Spanish language program— La Academia de Defensores . La Academia has a stronger focus on leadership and skill-building while incorporating some faith-based components in alignment with the Latino community. The program compensates participants for their time and provides community leaders with training, resources, and tools to elevate water issues and advocate for solutions in their community.

Specific modules covered in the program include understanding water systems & stormwater, water quality and pollution, trees and native plants, trash reduction, environmental justice, nature and public health, and advocacy strategies for improving the local watershed. The modules are taught by trusted local experts and incorporate  locally-sourced knowledge. After completing training modules as a cohort, each participant chooses a community capstone project to apply and showcase their new knowledge and skills.

When designing the program, Defensores took into consideration things like transportation costs, childcare costs, the expense of lost wages, and other financial factors that might influence someone’s ability to participate in La Academia. While offering a Spanish-language program significantly increases its accessibility to the community, the intentional inclusivity across multiple components of this program addresses more wholly the diverse lives of folks in Latino communities, helping meet the program’s goal of developing leaders to serve as point persons in their communities on watershed issues and solutions.

Location: Gaylord, MI Program: Building Leadership Development Programming into Northern Michigan Community Programming Contacts:  Abigail Ertel  and  Samantha Nellis 

Located in Northeast Michigan,  Huron Pines  has 50 years of experience working with communities on conservation in the Great Lakes Basin.

 Lake Huron Forever , an initiative led by Huron Pines & a regional steering committee, was developed in 2019 by shoreline community foundations and conservation partners from the United States and Canada. The shared goal of Lake Huron Forever is advancing water quality protection and supporting sustainable communities on all sides of the lake.The initiative supports efforts to design and implement on-the-ground projects that strengthen the health of communities and their natural resources.

As part of the initiative, Huron Pines adapted the Ontario-based  Coast Watchers  program from the  Lake Huron Coastal Centre  and started a companion program in northeast Michigan. The Huron Pines Coast Watchers program includes leadership development training alongside community science opportunities. Participants in the program are trained to measure air and water temperature, observe seasonal changes, and look at both sensitive and invasive species. With the incorporation of leadership development tools and curriculum, the community volunteers not only collect important data, they also serve as neighborhood ambassadors. Coast Watchers programming provides these ambassadors with the tools and skills needed to share stories that increase civic engagement around climate change and promote the water issues important to them.

From its inception, Lake Huron Forever sought to include the voices of American, Canadian, Tribal Nations and First Nation partners. Through the unified vision, and by leveraging shared resources and expertise, they are inspiring communities around Lake Huron to put their common waters first as they plan and implement projects for the benefit of residents

Location: Raleigh, NC Program: Walnut Creek Watershed Learning Network Contact:  Don Singletary 

In the mid 1990s, a group of people from Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church and two sister churches collaborated to address issues of environmental justice in the Rochester Heights community, one of the first African American communities in the City of Raleigh. The group, which came to be called  Partners for Environmental Justice  (PEJ), focused on a shared concern about the injustices facing this community such as flooding, trash dumping and wetland ecosystem degradation as well as outreach to city officials, other nonprofit partners, and funders.

In the late 1990’s, PEJ envisioned the creation of an urban wetland park and commissioned the master plan for what is now the  Walnut Creek Wetland Park . Today, PEJ’s work continues to address historic and current environmental justice issues in Southeast Raleigh, to advocate for equitable development policies that improve community resilience, and to promote the multiple benefits that green infrastructure provides to communities and watersheds.

Continuing their community-based work today, PEJ has expanded programming to help local youth and adults learn more about water quality, stormwater infrastructure, and equitable resilience practices. The  Walnut Creek Watershed Learning Network  (WCWLN) is an adult community education and empowerment initiative modeled after the successful  Atlanta Watershed Learning Network  and the subsequent development of the  Watershed Learning Network  materials.

Supported by PEJ’s highly collaborative relationship with the  City of Raleigh’s Department of Sustainability  and  The Conservation Fund , the program offers modules that address topics ranging from environmental justice and green infrastructure to communication skills and local advocacy. WCWLN runs twice per year, producing cohorts of trained community advocates with the knowledge to care for their local watershed and their community as a whole.

Location: Portland, OR Program: Water Justice Leadership Institute Contact:  Cheyenne Holiday 

Situated in Cully, one of Portland's most diverse and impoverished neighborhoods,  Verde  is an environmental nonprofit "by and for low-income communities and communities of color."

Partnering with Oregon Water Futures—and using findings from a community outreach and engagement process that resulted in the  Oregon Water Futures Project Report —Verde launched the Water Justice Leadership Institute (WJLI) "to train frontline community members across Oregon to be leaders and local champions for policy change in their communities."

To develop the program, Verde created a survey and hosted exploratory calls with community-based organizations to gain insights on community learning interests.  The WJLI curriculum was then created based on the community input, including content on water systems, drinking water affordability, emergency preparedness, infrastructure needs, and outdoor recreation. The creation of these modules leaned heavily into adapting K-12 environmental science and water curriculum for adults: many of the activities in the program center human-nature connections and acknowledge the trauma inflicted on people by water systems and lack of access to water and recreation. The activities also encourage play, exploration, and curiosity. When possible, they are legitimately fun and center joy.

While WJLI is designed to be a virtual program reaching folks across Oregon, there are planned opportunities for field trips and other in-person engagement: celebration and place-based learning are big parts of these experiences.

With 15-20 participants in each cohort, the goal of the WJLI is to create a community of leaders throughout the state as well as a larger water justice network.

Location: Guelph, ON Program: Climate Leadership Development Program Contact:  Dani Lindamood 

Beginning as an organization opposed to Nestlé Water Canada's water bottling operations,  Wellington Water Watchers  (WWW) has expanded to become a resource to grassroots water protectors across Ontario. Much of their work focuses on supporting locally-based campaigns to protect water resources and the environment.

To build upon their existing programming, Water Watchers integrated leadership development components into ongoing campaign support for their network, and designed flexible learning modules and lessons that are accessible when leaders need them.