Event information: Waterkeeper Alliance Conference, June 6-10, Buffalo, NY
ALLARM presented at the Waterkeeper Alliance Conference of 2018 to provide a bilingual (English, Spanish) workshop to Waterkeepers from around the world to teach the monitoring study design process. Study design is the first step programs go through when they are developing their monitoring program. It helps to answer key questions about monitoring goals, data use, as well as the who, what, where, and why of monitoring. Throughout the spring 2018 semester, I worked on translating materials for this workshop with one of my fellow Watershed Coordinators. It has been surreal being able to do exactly what I strived to do in college—help make science accessible to communities in need. We worked on translating PowerPoints and worksheets for ALLARM’s study design procedure, which consists of watershed groups identifying a problem in their watershed, developing a solution, collecting data, sharing that data, and potentially achieving local governmental change. It was certainly a challenge practicing using a different language to communicate science. Interacting with people from different countries provided me with different experiences and points of view about water quality concerns. Around 71% of attendees were Spanish-speaking, including Waterkeepers from Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia and Peru. In the future, I hope to continue using my bilingualism to my learning advantage and to engage in conversations with other bilingual speakers in the water quality field in order to build my capacity even more.
Getting ready to present about the study design process at the conference!