Blog

Commit to a Green New Year

by Karla Noboa
Photo by Ashley Lowery

This spring, it is more important than ever for us to come together and make every day Earth Day. In 2020, there were 26 billion pieces of litter along America’s waterways, according to data compiled by Keep America Beautiful. With the increase in single use personal protective equipment and fewer resources available due to the impacts of COVID, litter is more… Read More ›

How River Network Is Building Community, Online

by cschmidt
Connection and the open exchange of information and ideas has always been integral to water stewardship and community leadership, even before the pandemic. For this reason, River Network launched an online community for the nationwide network of water protectors in January of this year. What you might not have noticed when we launched the community... Read More ›

Building Strong Champions with Leadership Development

by Brenna Goggin

River Network builds Strong Champions. That is our mantra and the essence of our mission. At its core, Building Strong Champions is building the capacity of individuals and organizations. Today, we take a look at what it takes to be an effective leader – the crux of our Leadership Development work.  “I define a leader… Read More ›

Stream Management Planning & Rancher Stewardship in Colorado

by Mikhaela Mullins
Since 2017, River Network has worked to increase the number and quality of Stream Management Plans in Colorado. Stream Management Plans, or SMPs, were developed as a result of 2015’s Colorado’s Water Plan, which set goals and measurable objectives to map out the future of water management in the state. One of these objectives is that 80% of locally prioritized streams have an SMP... Read More ›

Action Day for Clean Water and Rivers – Join Us!

by cschmidt

Have you started texting and tweeting your members of Congress, and are missing the chance to actually talk to someone? Are you new to advocacy and want some support to make an effective ask to get Congress to invest in clean and safe water? Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, it’s an… Read More ›

Fostering Community Leadership: Putting the Research to Work with Three Network Members

by Hannah Mico
People with hands up in air

In November 2020, River Network published a new network resource: Tools for Equitable Climate Resilience: Fostering Community Leadership. The toolkit outlines equitable and intentional ways to cultivate emerging leaders, including a step-by-step guide for building community-focused leadership development programs. Since introducing the toolkit at the end of 2020, we’ve moved forward in applying the research with… Read More ›

Standing Stronger Together – NGOs, Tribes, and Water

by Nicole Silk
by Nicole Silk, River Network and Emma Robbins, Dig Deep Context: Equitable Solutions Require Diverse Perspectives We believe that everyone should have access to clean, safe, affordable drinking water and healthy rivers. Sadly, this access is not equal across our nation, with low-income and predominantly non-white communities and neighborhoods experiencing stark disparities. Perhaps the most... Read More ›

Partnership-Building Technical Assistance Grants: Announcing Selected Communities and Water Systems

by Katherine Baer
By our partners at the WaterNow Alliance. We are excited to announce that three community groups and water systems have been selected to receive Partnership-Building Technical Assistance Grants. These groups represent a diverse range of communities and challenges, and will receive technical support to grow their partnerships and pilot trust-building best practices. It is River... Read More ›

Building Strong Champions with Organizational Sustainability

by Brenna Goggin
Post It Notes

In our November River Voices, we gave a brief overview of our Building Strong Champions program and how we provide support to our growing Network. At its core, Building Strong Champions is capacity-building work at both the individual and organizational levels. Over the next several issues of River Voices, we will do a deeper dive… Read More ›

Protecting Drinking Water in the Great Lakes

by Hannah Mico
The Great Lakes make up 90% of North America’s fresh surface water and, in the US, 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes as their drinking water source. However, many in the Great Lakes region face threats to their drinking water — from contamination concerns related to lead pipes, harmful algal blooms or PFAS;... Read More ›

5 Takeaways From the 2020 Emerging Leader

by Megan Nguyen
When I was first selected as River Network’s 2020 Emerging Leader in March of 2020, I asked, “What version of my story do you want to hear: the activist version or the conservationist version?” The team at River Network resolutely replied, “both!” This last year really fused these two identities—my communications associate role at California... Read More ›

Eight Network Members Awarded Technical Assistance Grants to Support Community-Led Research

by April Ingle
With funding and support from the Kresge Foundation, River Network is excited to announce it has awarded Technical Assistance Grants to eight organizations around the country to support the design and implementation of grassroots, ground-up, community-led processes to better understand climate- and water-related issues, impacts and threats in their community, and support advocacy efforts to address them.    Each of the selected organizations have experience working on various aspects of climate resilience,... Read More ›

A Historic Year: What it Means for Our Future Work with Water

by Sheyda Esnaashari

On November 7, 2020, the US presidential election was called for former Vice President Joe Biden. This election was historic for many reasons — occurring during an ongoing global pandemic, a country reckoning with continued racial injustice, and the increasing impacts of climate change, to name just a few. In the weeks since his election,… Read More ›