Our Big Day!

On the evening of May 19th we celebrated the culmination of our Rivervision Leadership Project at the Missouri Botanical Garden!

We have had a great time with our participating 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grade students over the past 6 months! This was our chance to showcase the students' work and creativity in a public forum. We recognized our final project winners with prizes and screened a multi-media celebration of Rivervision participants, volunteers, educators, and site work over the past six months. The real focus of the evening, however, was a discussion panel comprised of local and regional environmental professionals (most of whom had been involoved with the program previously).

We were fortunate to have a terrific panel who, while not always agreeing with one another, covered a myriad of water quality and water use issues in a respectful, educational, and thought provoking way. Don Marsh, well known St. Louis radio personality, was our moderator for the evening. He asked the panel a series of questions to prompt discussion; some were his own, but most were from participating students.

All told, the evening brought together 145 participating students, their families, 16 volunteers, 6 panel members, and interested parties frome several civic, environmental, and governmental agencies in the St. Louis metro area.

Unfortunately, I am having difficulty getting Blogger to upload our high resolution images from the event. Instead I'll sign off with a shot of our 7th and 8th grade Rivervision students we took a few months ago...we had a ton of fun!