Reconnecting to Our Waterways is focused on holistic solutions that integrate six related elements. Each element has a taskforce to identify and support projects connected to each waterway. At the January ROW Steering Committee meeting, Mark Kesling, co-chair of the Education Element Committee and founder of The daVinci Pursuit, presented on the Committee’s commitment to collaborate and create educational opportunities along our waterways.
The Education Element Committee is focused on five levels of interpretation as a way to balance educational approaches along each waterway and has shared ideas with the Well-being and Ecology Element Committees over the past several months. Through this collaboration, the committee created the following five levels of interpretation:
- Acquaintance: an awareness of the phenomenon or object being studied
- Insight: a connection between what is being observed and a concept or idea
- Understanding: knowledge of how things are connected and work conceptually
- Learning: a desire to know, discover and explore more about an object or idea
- Stewardship: the responsible use and protection of natural environments and the objects within
Focusing on these five levels provides opportunities for education from the first moment a person experiences a waterway all the way to dedicating service time to improving the waterway and the adjacent neighborhoods. Moving forward, the Committee will be working purposefully to see an increase in ROW neighborhood participation in stewardship activities in cooperation with ROW’s implementation partnership with Plan 2020. To accomplish this, the Committee will focus on incorporating educational elements on all ROW projects to empower individuals to make a difference in their community by investigating the health of the watershed, connecting with its history, and recognizing its value to our neighborhoods.
The Education Element Committee’s approach to touch and educate all individuals along our waterways will prove impactful by building stewards in Indianapolis and among our waterway neighborhoods.