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Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman and Stormwater Education Coordinator Sierra Stickney (Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps member) headed west last week to give a presentation to an afterschool group in the birthplace of environmental justice: Warren County.

“I was really excited to connect with people in the upper watershed because one of my goals is to expand our presence in the upper watershed. This collaboration with Working Landscapes, opened that up to us,” Katey said.

Working Landscapes is an environmental justice group that hosts “Food for Thought,” a program geared toward high school students. Currently they are working on projects concerning agriculture in relation to the environment, Katey said.

“Our presentation covered general information about Sound Rivers and the work we do, and we did a fun, little demonstration when we got to the Swim Guide part: showing them how we read samples. We turned off all the lights and they counted up the lighted wells in the IDEXX trays under black lights and worked out the most probable number of bacteria in the samples,” Katey said. “They were jazzed about that.”

Sierra’s part of the program covered the importance of wetlands in relation to agriculture in North Carolina.

Katey says these types of presentations are at the top of her favorites list.

“I love doing educational stuff with younger people,” she said. “That’s how I got into this work is learning more about environmental issues through presentations like these. It also plays a role in creating the next generation of environmentalists.”

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Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps is a service program of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, funded by a grant through the North Carolina Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism.