Educational Programs - Shared Learning

In mid-2003, Agricultural Watershed Institute was very new and faced a chicken-and-egg problem common to new nonprofits: How do we attract donations and grants without a track record? How do we build a track record without money?

We lined up John Marlin (Waste Management and Research Center ), Robert Darmody (University of Illinois), and Keith Alexander (City of Decatur, Illinois) as speakers. We reserved the Macon County SWCD conference room, sent out flyers and a news release, and held our first public seminar, Dredged Sediments: A resource out of place. And 50 people came!

We now call such events our Shared Learning Program. They bring together researchers and educators; governmental officials; farmers and rural landowners; environmental advocates; and other watershed stakeholders. We can all learn from each other. Since that first seminar in August 2003, AWI has sponsored these public educational events:

• Nutrient Management Incentive Programs – seminar & roundtable
• Stream Naturalization – seminar and field trip
• Farm Power: A workshop on energy crops for power and heat
• The Green Lands , Blue Waters Initiative – seminar
• Sense of Place and Environmental Stewardship – seminar
• A Celebration of the Sangamon River Watershed and its People – AWI's first Sangamon Watershed Celebration in March 2005 featured a Sangamon River documentary by UIS professor Charles Schweighauser and poetry reading by John Knoepfle.

The Illinois River Basin Hydrologic Observatory – seminar

We do not judge the success of these events on attendance alone. Some events generated ideas that subsequently found their way into successful grant proposals. Exchange of ideas and increased mutual understanding are important to our role as bridge-builders.

The Sangamon Watershed Celebration has a special place in our Shared Learning Program. Most AWI events deal with scientific, economic and policy aspects of agriculture and resource management. The Celebration focuses more on the people and history of the region. It is intended as an occasion for urban and rural people together to celebrate what Abraham Lincoln called ‘this goodly land' and our shared ‘duty to posterity'.