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Over the last year, we worked with the wonderful folks at The Nature Conservancy to develop a 4-month training program called Act on Water. We were excited to partner with The Nature Conservancy again, who we previously collaborated with to create a custom board game that they use throughout New York State, called Water for Tomorrow.
The Act on Water program is designed to train everyone from concerned citizens to organizers, activists, and environmental advocates on how to organize, develop, manage, and win a community-based campaign for water rights. The program is designed for teams and consists of twelve 2-hour+ workshops, multiple facilitator supported lab sessions, and a series of campaign objectives that the participants will accomplish through field organizing during the course.
One of the main goals of the program is to get the participants organizing as part of their work: instead of a static course focused on learning leadership skills and tactics and strategy, the participants will learn by doing in this project based program. TESA’s purpose was to take The Nature Conservancy’s previous curriculum and rebuild it to be an interactive, participatory, and engaging program where participants not only saw themselves as agents for making change – but actually became those change makers.
By the time a participant finishes the Act on Water program, they will have accomplished everything from developing internal management systems to conducting a stakeholder analysis and interviews in the community, as well as creating a detailed action plan for how to continue their water campaign when the program concludes.
It was a fantastic process getting to work with The Nature Conservancy on this critically important project, especially as water access and protection becomes more vital during the rising climate emergency; and it was especially gratifying to create a program that will support people around the world to organize and protect vital watersheds. To read more about how The Nature Conservancy is working to protect water ecosystems and the people who depend on them, check this out.
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