Please join us at our 25th Anniversary VIP Open House event for the Durham Children’s Watershed Festival!

AGENDA

· Date: Thursday, September 26, 2024

· Arrival: 10:30 a.m.

· Welcome and presentation: 10:45 a.m.

· Photo opp.: 11 a.m.

· Festival tour (optional): 11:15 a.m. (approx. one hour in length)

· Location: Please enter Camp Samac at 275 Conlin Road East, Oshawa, and proceed to the Fireside Room in Council Hall (west side of building). Outside walking tour will take place rain or shine. Light refreshments will be provided.

· RSVP: Please RSVP by Thursday, September 19, 2024.

About the Festival

Launched as part of the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority’s (CLOCA) 40th anniversary theme of water quality in 1998, the goal of the Durham Children’s Watershed Festival (DCWF) is to increase awareness of Grade 4 students concerning water issues, motivating them to become water stewards in their home, classroom, and community. The Festival includes over 35 hands-on interactive activity centres with water conservation and protection messages relevant to the students’ everyday lives. Activities are delivered by trained, volunteer high school students and designed to have learning outcomes supporting Ontario curriculum expectations. The intent is to inform, provide tools and support positive behaviour change to create a healthy watershed community.

This is the only event of its kind in Durham Region and is one of 26 delivered in Ontario. It is estimated that during the 2024 event, approximately 3,000 Grade 4 students, 500 teacher and adult school trip volunteers, 600 high school student and 30 corporate sponsor volunteers will participate. Community involvement is an integral component to the success of delivering the Festival. A minimum of 120 volunteers supports the Festival each day, hosting the various activity centres, assisting students, and answering questions; their contributions average to be 1,500 hours each year.

Since our first in-person Festival in 1998, over 86,466 Grade 4 students, 9,378 high school students and 11,196 teachers and parent volunteers have learned about the importance of water in their lives and how their actions impact the watershed in which they live.

Each year, centres are researched, created, and implemented incorporating new technology ranging from a simple water pH test to CLOCA’s high-tech Augmented Reality Sandbox (ARS). We also provide students with opportunities to step into the day of a wetland biologist and water technician, learning the skills and techniques that are used in the field while monitoring and sampling. Students get to try binoculars or state-of-the-art weather stations which will inspire and spark STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) learning.

Since the early 2000s, a highlight of the Festival was an engaging Indigenous Elder from Quebec who travelled to many water festivals across Ontario. Audiences were continuously mesmerized with his presentations. Upon retiring in 2017, he was estimated to have connected to accumulated audience participation totalling one million! We continued to invite Indigenous guests and during the Covid pandemic we were able to engage students with virtual presentations from a variety of Knowledge Keepers who presented on nibi (water), manoomin (wild rice), water walks, responsibility and relations, and Indigenous ways of knowing. With the return to in-person learning, it is important to continue to include Indigenous content at the Festival. As such, in 2023, the inclusion of Indigenous language was established, and the main Festival areas were renamed in Anishinaabemowin. The three activity areas are now referred to as Nibi (water), Giizhig (sky) and Aki (land). We are working with a First Nations Language expert to update the activity centres to include Anishinaabemowin throughout the Festival in a new activity where participants will hear spoken and recorded Anishinaabemowin words and see the double-vowel spellings. This is one example of how CLOCA is working towards Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action.

Baamaapii