Headwaters

Education and Outreach

The technical nature of the best management practices and cost-share opportunities offered through Headwaters might make education and outreach activities seem peripheral and dispensable. In fact, since all of the available practices and assistance are optional and voluntary, public outreach is essential -- it’s the advertising and sales department for conservation!

Since the beginning, Headwaters has always hosted agriculture and forestry tours, workshops, demonstration days, and generated newsletters and newspaper articles for the general public. We have sponsored area teenagers to Youth Conservation Camp, and nominated college scholarship winners. We have always supported scouting and civic programs, and have provided conservation materials to the schools through Natural Resources Conservation Week and Soil Stewardship Week.

LINK TO VASWCD SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION

In the past ten years, Headwaters has placed increasing emphasis on education programs, including school curricula based on Standards of Learning, and watershed-wide initiatives, with agency and locality partners.

From Save Our Streams macro-invertebrate monitoring with Blue Ridge Community College in 1995, to a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service at the Augusta Springs Wetlands, from Riverfest and Envirothon, to Chesapeake Bay trips and the Shenandoah Sojourn raft trip, Headwaters continues to expand and intensify its outreach efforts.

Since 1997, Headwaters has organized and hosted a local Envirothon competition, a nationwide natural resources competition for high school teams. Teams from Headwaters have been the Virginia state champions in 2003, 4 and 5, have twice been 2nd in the nation, and, most recently, are the 2006 National Champions!

Headwaters also hosts high school mentorship students who earn senior class credit for working at least 150 hours with Headwaters and NRCS staff, learning conservation skills and techniques.

Education staff is responsible for press releases, writing newsletters to our mailing list of 1400, and annual reports, as well as special publications.

Teacher workshops and field trips on natural resource education, including Project Learning Tree, are a summer staple for Headwaters.

Headwaters has secured grants and coordinated three-day Chesapeake Bay Foundation field trips, first for area teachers, and then for high school and middle school students, for four summers. These trips have developed a core group of environmentalists who really see the larger watershed picture

High school students on Chesapeake Bay trips--here shown kissing the menhaden fish used as bait in crab traps.

From water monitoring to tree packing and education programs, we simply could not function without volunteers, Directors and Associate Directors, Earth Team Volunteers,
and student assistants. Here they are, making field trips and service projects possible!

Augusta Springs field trips

Headwaters coordinated both the week-long Shenandoah raft trip, and this book, given to all sixth graders in the watershed. Working with agency partners makes watershed-wide initiatives possible.

Fourth graders at the Marl Creek Trail at McCormick Farm, in the Upper James Watershed

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Education and Outreach