12th Annual

Durham Children's

Groundwater Festival

September 28th to October 2nd, 2009

9:45 am – 1:30 pm at Camp Samac, Oshawa

Rick, who as the CLOCA Chairman founded the Groundwater Festival in 1998, is very proud of the festival and how it has grown.

The 1999 Festival was honoured with a visit from the former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Hillary Weston. The Lt. Governor was escorted on her tour by CLOCA Chair Rick Johnson (left).

Launched as part of the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority's (CLOCA) 40^th anniversary theme of water quality in 1998, the goal of the Durham Children's Groundwater Festival is to increase awareness of grade 4 students concerning water issues, motivating them to become water stewards in their home, classroom and community. The festival includes 40 hands-on interactive activity centres with messages relevant to the student's everyday lives, water conservation and protection. Through the activity centres, they discover the importance of water, and how their actions affect the watershed in which they live.           .

2009 Event Summary

The 2009 Durham Children's Groundwater Festival was held at Camp Samac from Monday, September 28^th to Friday, October 2^nd celebrating its 12^th anniversary. Over 4,000 grade 4 students attended the Festival this year. It should be noted that while all schools registering for this event were accommodated, CLOCA staff were challenged by designated Professional Development Days held by two of the four school boards on the last day of the Festival.

The Festival hosted the Children's Water 'Education Council (CWEC) workshop on "How to run a Groundwater Festival" for the fourth year in a row. The Festival is used by CEWC as a working model to give workshop participants the full perspective of how to run a festival. Staff provided them with a tour of the festival and a Q and A session. One of the highlights of the Festival this year was the migration of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytshca) up the Oshawa Creek, adding a memorable experience for students, teachers and volunteers as they walked to Areas 2 and 3.

Our high school volunteer program continues to grow with more than 500 youth coordinators from 11 secondary schools delivering the activities this year. These students receive training for their activity which includes messaged scripts and presentation gl1idelines. Each year we find more and more of our high school students participated in the Festival when they were grade 4 students. This is a trend that is very encouraging, as they playa new role as activity leaders, sharing their knowledge in an interactive and rewarding atmosphere.            .

Over the past 12 years, more than 48,100 grade 4 students, 5,000 high school students and 5,100 teacher and parent volunteers have participated in the event. The following provides an overview, by Region, of participating elementary and high schools in the 2009 Festival.