Dennis Nelson0:00
Thank you very much, David. I'd like to thank the sponsors and the organization. Wonderful job. I'd like to have a few people in the audience stand up: the chair of the Project WET Foundation board, Heidi Paul, Nicole Ritter, our international program, and my accompanying person, my wife Cindy Nelson. Okay, great to be here. Just a quick survey: how many of you think you're a teacher? Okay, let me have a... we'll do this again in a second. Anyone in the Project WET program that has an interest in educating people about water? It doesn't matter if you're in a government, in a big corporation, in a nature center, in a kindergarten class. We believe everyone is a teacher. Water education for teachers is the broadest perspective. So let me ask you: if you're a teacher, thank you very much.
One of the biggest challenges that the Project WET Foundation has, and we chose to address this in a way that's really poised to education, we believe in water. Water users: every child in a school, when you look at them, you don't know where their mom and dad come from, you don't know where their grandparents come from, you don't know what their guardians do. So we look at all children as water users, and we treat them with huge respect. I know there are groups that focus on one particular point of view, but we look at it very broadly: energy industry, urban, rural, navigation, fish and wildlife, recreation, and of course the biggest user first: systems. Now we also have a core belief that we really take seriously: we believe water resources management is essential for future economic and social stability in a healthy environment. We've had that core belief for 30 years, and it really is sustainability.
Now the big challenges that we have is how do we take these unbelievably complicated topics of water and bring them into a realm that is understandable to educators, so that they can use them both in classrooms, in their businesses, and with others. Our model has been based on bringing the scientific management community together with educators. I'm going to highlight this image that we have over here. Project WET started as just a concept: how do you tell a water story, a water science story about management, and put it in the context that makes sense to children? I wanted to highlight this activity for this event because, you know, it's one water. Our world has one water, it's very different in all different places. So this bucket in the middle represents your source of water: ground water, surface water, could be rain water. All of these strings connected to it are connected to children. And every speaker has talked about future generations and helping these children.
We have an activity called 841: one for all, eight huge water users. Agriculture, I mentioned them earlier, fish and wildlife, recreation, navigation, industry. Everyone's critically important. They have to invest serious money to get that source of water in infrastructure. Okay, four needs: right amount, right time, right quality, right cost. Everyone needs that one source of water. Now, one for all: if we want every little one, everyone that we reach in a program, to understand that they can make a difference in the world through awareness, knowledge, and education. We started in North Dakota, the program expanded to every state in the country, and now we're in 66 countries, working with just about every kind of organization that you can think of. One of our themes is how do we get all of these different types of interests to work together.
I want to thank the federal agencies that were here. The origins of Project WET come from your agencies. We either have board members or once upon a time we were sponsored by your agencies. So I want to thank you sincerely, not necessarily so much for me and the Project WET Foundation, but literally from an idea to a program that is reaching people. This happens to be in Vietnam with our science education materials, but in Uganda and in Argentina, but most importantly for our group here, also in communities and schools and places across the United States. So thank you, thank you everyone here, and especially the other groups that received this award.
