Agricultural Watershed Institute

Educational Programs - Shared Learning

Annual Watershed Celebration with a Cajun Flavor

The 2009 Sangamon Watershed Celebration was held on June 25, 2009 at Richland Community College ’s Shilling Center in Decatur. This annual event is sponsored by the Agricultural Watershed Institute along with several co-sponsors. The theme for the 2009 event was “An evening with our Gulf Coast neighbors.” The event included a reception and a concert by the Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Attendees were treated to Cajun and local food and perused displays about protecting local watersheds and the Gulf of Mexico. There was also a book sale by Novel Ideas. During the reception, environmental advocates from the Gulf Restoration Network showed documentary videos and spoke about the impact of wetland loss and hypoxia.

The Lost Bayou Ramblers are led by brothers Louis and Andre Michot, who grew up near Lafayette, Louisiana, in a family immersed in music that conveys the passions, tribulations, and elations of the Cajun people. They have been called the “keepers of the flame, champions of Cajun music's cultural past.” Through their music, the Ramblers and ecologist/musician Whitney Broussard will weave stories of Cajun life and livelihood in the Louisiana bayous.

We would like to thank the co-sponsors of the 2009 Celebration - Richland Community College, the Gulf Restoration Network, Decatur Magazine, Decatur Audubon Society, the City of Decatur, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the Community Environmental Council.

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'.