Thanks to everyone who came along to Love My River Northwich's first volunteer session last Thursday! We got off to a great start with a total of 14 volunteers registering with the project. We spent time introducing the project and testing out the methodology for our walkover surveys and 'Citizen Science' water quality testing.
Now we have got to grips with some of the techniques, we have scheduled in a programme of public volunteer days between now and the end of March. These will be taking place on alternate Thursdays, starting on 1st December (with a break between Christmas and New Year) and one Saturday each month in January (21st), February (18th) and March (18th). A list of dates is available by clicking on the 'Events' tab on the Love My River Northwich Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LoveMyRiverNorthwich/events/
Love My River - Northwich - Events | Facebook
www.facebook.com
Love My River - Northwich. 162 likes · 134 talking about this. Love My River Northwich works within our community to raise awareness of local rivers and...
We have also had interest from some school groups and we hope to hear from more as the project progresses. Remember you can do your bit for the project by telling people about it and encouraging them to get involved.
Another request for volunteers is for next Tuesday 29th November. We have been contacted by the The Rivers Trust who are facilitating the filming of some of the Life IP programme funded projects as a way of documenting how the funding is being used. The film team are keen to find a project they can film that day. Its not one of our scheduled days, but I have told them we can probably do some water sampling and testing with some of the volunteers that day if it helps them. It would certainly help us, if we could get some film footage we can use for publicity and awareness raising. Would anyone like to be involved that day?
I'm also trying to use the fact that we have scheduled dates to invite guest speakers and trainers along and it helps to give them some alternatives. Hopefully I'll be able to confirm some of these pretty soon.
We'd like to use our web presence (mainly facebook but also a page on the Grozone website) to share web links, including videos, that are relevant to our project. This could include for example: videos of how to carry out sampling and testing, articles about our local rivers and news items about anything relating to river water quality nationwide. If you spot anything suitable (or want to help search things out!?) I'd be very grateful if you could pass the details on.
So, I hope some of you will be interested in joining us on some of the scheduled dates, All of which will be starting off at Grozone Community Garden: http://www.grozone.org.uk/
Watch this space and I hope to catch up with some of you soon.
Pete