On Wednesday, July 19th, ALLARM met with Stream Team volunteers from Conewango, New York for a training workshop over Zoom. The ALLARM team was made up of Julie Vastine (Director), Lindsay VanFossen (Water Quality Technician), Isabel Ruff (Volunteer Monitoring Specialist), and watershed coordinators Whimsy Mark-Ockerbloom ’24 and Kailey Sipe ’25.
The workshop led volunteers step by step through the monitoring process, with ALLARM staff both guiding through the manual as well as physically demonstrating the steps of monitoring, allowing the volunteers to follow along with their provided monitoring kits. Through each step – equipment calibration, sample collection, at-stream testing, and post-stream testing – Conewango’s volunteers worked through the protocol, asking good questions and troubleshooting where needed in order to prepare themselves to take their monitoring beyond the screen and to the stream. For us ALLARMies, this workshop was a wonderful opportunity to not only meet Conewango’s volunteers and get experience presenting publicly, but preparation for this workshop also allowed us refresh our trainer tips and tricks.
I personally led volunteers through at-stream temperature measurement, and post-stream conductivity and nitrate-nitrogen testing. They were all processes I was familiar and comfortable with, but it was still somewhat nerve-wracking to have to test my knowledge by running through the steps live on screen and answering any and all questions that came up. The rest of the ALLARM team was amazing support, offering additional information and clarification when anyone faltered in addition to keeping a positive and energetic atmosphere as the session ran through the evening.
The workshop went off without a hitch, and we are thankful to have gotten to see and work with our partners in Conewango. Digital workshops like this allow ALLARM to reach out to geographically distant groups and partners, while still providing direct support as we all work towards monitoring the health of our waterways.
