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Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2024 Annual Network Meeting: Building resilience for your community & watershed. This year we had 82 individual participants from Atlantic Canada plus attendees from across the country!
Below you’ll find a summary of this year’s network meeting including presentation recordings.
Meeting Summary/Highlight
Intro
As we were putting together this year’s Network Meeting, we were reflecting on what a disruptive few years this has been, not just on our watersheds, but to the groups and individuals that have been looking after them. We found ourselves asking – has the pandemic and other events affected water monitoring and stewardship activity? We know these disruptions have impacted the voluntary sector more broadly, and anecdotally at least, there are some signs of stress. But, as we saw during our fantastic presentations, if the trees are down, that doesn’t mean they can’t regrow. Our meeting opened a dialogues between community partners far and wide, sharing strategies on how to build resilience into our organizations and watersheds
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Day 1
Watershed Resilience
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Community partners shared how they have fostered resilience throughout their watershed, from monitoring harmful cyanobacteria blooms to strengthening salmon population through incubation methods.
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We learned the importance of reframing our perspective to handle uncertainty and create a more positive mindset in adapting to changing climate conditions.
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Speakers demonstrated a rich diversity of strategies in place to achieve their goals that can be applied across a wide variety of watersheds.
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New AWN Resources
We are so excited to have been able to share at this year’s Network Meeting the highly anticipated release of some amazing new AWN resources!
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We shared a detailed tour of our new resources; the Water Monitoring Knowledge Hub, Community Partners Map, and Monitoring Plan Builder, as well as a sneak peak of our upcoming Watershed Reporting Tool!
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Participants got to explore the new Knowledge Hub and identify ways to incorporate this growing resource into various aspects of water monitoring programming.
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Community partners who attended were given the very first opportunity to add themselves to our brand new map.
Explore the Knowledge Hub now at learn.atlwaternetwork.ca/
Check out the Community Partner map and add in your organization at learn.atlwaternetwork.ca/map
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Day 2
Community resilience in our network
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Presentations highlighted how programs can be adapted to coincide with changing priorities, and building local capacity on community-based watershed monitoring
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Participants heard about first hand experiences utilizing communities to help adapt to a fluid funding environment, and learned the importance of Friend-Raising.
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We also heard about the newly formed Canada Water Agency, its structure and priorities on a national scale
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Training Session: Growing resilience for watershed groups
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We heard from two experienced facilitators in sustainability and building capacity and learning cultures of not for profits, Sophia Horwitz and Greg Woolner, Founders of Colab.
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Participants drew from their own experiences with organizational resilience and worked on how to self assess, to help them build a better understanding of their own organizational resilience needs
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Through breakout groups, everyone worked together to highlight opportunities to support each other on similar challenges being currently faced.
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Underscored the importance of hope and positivity, amongst anxiety driven by climate change, and finding what sustains within your work.
Learn more about CoLab at https://thecolab.ca/
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We have been so inspired by everyone who showed up to this year’s annual meeting, and were blown away by the passion displayed to tackle our changing watershed with resiliency. We can’t wait to see you next year!
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