2020 was quite a year! Despite the challenges we faced along the way, we’re proud of our successes. Among many other stories we could tell, here are a few of our accomplishments from 2020:
After postponing all community visits, we safely revisited Long Point First Nation in Winneway, Quebec to reconnect and to scope our two community-suggested sites for restoration work.
Waabnoong Bemjiwang Association of First Nations and Water First announced our new water training partnership beginning in the spring of 2021. Together, we will begin delivering a drinking water treatment and environmental water management training program, which will support ~12 young Indigenous adults to become certified water treatment plant operators.
We halted all visits to communities, and staff worked from home while we adjusted to a new working landscape due to COVID-19, and everything ended up alright!
In late August, interns in the drinking water program with Bimose Tribal Council wrote their Entry Level Curse and Operator in Training (OIT) exams, a significant milestone in the internship program.
Indigenous School workshops, our comprehensive, STEM-based water science programs for K-12 schools, went virtual! The programs transitioned to remote programming, and our team began delivering their first online workshops to students from Beausoleil First Nation!
We created a new, school-aged youth education pilot project, Growing Roots. Through this project, we partner with different communities to expand our youth water science education programming to maximize the involvement of Indigenous youth, leading to long-term environmental action and stewardship.
We continued our 5-year project with the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach in northern Quebec, a project that helps address the community’s concerns about possible water contamination from nearby mining activities.
