2024

Granted $1,600.00 for the Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival Programs

Project Objectives:

The Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival (HMKCWF) has for 14 years, been an annual event which actively inspires and teaches elementary students of the region about water ecology and water stewardship in their homes, classrooms, and communities. Teachers, classes, and volunteers including both secondary and post-secondary students have attended outdoor ‘day camps’, learning via some of 40+ experiential activity centers.

We cooperate with other conservation organizations who offer research-based information through hosting a third of our relevant activity centers. Several activities involving resources and models focused on the connections between wildlife habitat as part of watershed ecosystem health and human health and stewardship have been developed with support of the OWF in the past. As more extreme environmental events related to climate change and water (flooding, droughts, storms etc.) are occurring, we have added, since 2019, content focused on climate change. We have also developed 2 educational websites and a Water Hero / Big Splash program in which students share water conservation ideas and stewardship acts in follow-up to the festival. Also in July, development of new activity centers focused on connecting boat cleaning & invasive species and citizen science water testing with aquatic.