Clean Water Celebration

                Partnerships in Education and Community Action

"The largest and most important environmental classroom in the entire United States, maybe the world"
Val Adamkus, former director USEPA Region V and current President of Lithuania.

What is the clean water celebration?

The Clean Water Celebration is a joint effort between the Sun Foundation, a not-for-profit arts and science agency and the Rivers Project, a high school water quality monitoring program coordinated by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. The Project is made possible in part by a volunteer navigating committee and sponsored by tax-deductible contributions and grants from businesses,  state and federal agencies and individuals. The Clean Water Celebration was begun as a cooperative effort in 1992 between the Sun Foundation and the Rivers Project.
The Clean Water Celebration is a two-day  event held each spring at the Peoria Civic Center in Peoria, IL. The largest event of its kind in the world, it is students making a difference by protecting water -- our most precious resource. It is Illinois students, teachers, business professionals and environmentalists, joined by an odd assortment of tiny tadpoles, wiggly worms, native blue gills, and zebra mussels. There's nothing like it anywhere.

The Clean Water Celebration is a truly unique event, a model developed in Peoria for the world. The goal is to impress upon students the importance of thinking globally and acting locally. By increasing knowledge in the community and schools about the importance of water conservation and preservation, the Clean Water Celebration helps establish the human right to clean water and a healthy environment. It is the dream of the volunteers that this program will grow to link school to school, state to state, country to country, to clean and protect our water.

The Clean Water Celebration incorporates a variety of different programs for students and has grown each year to become an magical educational experience combining both the arts and sciences.

Each year's Clean Water Celebration becomes bigger and more successful. It was recently showcased in the Christian Science Monitor, and was one of the fifty programs nationwide to be given an honorable mention in the 1995 Community Solutions for Education national awards program sponsored by the Coalition on Educational Initiatives and USA Today. In 1998, the Clean Water Celebration received the Environmental Youth Award from the President of the United States for "outstanding achievement in environmental protection services."

How to become an educational partner?

• Become a sponsor with your tax-deductible contribution of $1,000 or more to the Sun Foundation's Clean Water Celebration Fund, 501-C-3. Sponsors names and logos will appear in all public announcements, on Celebration T-shirts, and in the Sun Foundation Journal (distribution 20,000).
• Become an exhibitor. Booths: $175 for businesses, $100 for non-profit organizations
• Sponsor a school bus or exhibit booth fee ($50-$100)
• Volunteer for the event
• Serve on the Clean Water Navigating Committee
• Become a friend of the Clean Water Celebration event with a contribution of $100 or more. Friends are acknowledged in the Sun Foundation Journal

Making Waves Award
Each year the Clean Water Celebration presents "Making Waves" awards, recognizing extraordinary efforts toward protecting and restoring the water environment. Past recipients have been models of action for students and the public:

• Peoria Notre Dame, E. Peoria, Chester and Dundee Crown high schools have won for exemplary participation in the Rivers Project and the Clean Water Celebration, including environmental and energy saving programs at their schools.
• The US Geological Survey for their instrumental role in promoting water information and providing this information to the public
• Chad Pregracke for his hundreds of hours spent cleaning up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers and for serving as a model for youth in nurturing the environment
• Dr. Bob Williams for his effort in establishing the Clean Water Celebration

The exhibit booths are hands-on learning stations created by both students and professionals. Schools, businesses and organizations engage students in water or environmental activities including :- creatures of the wetlands, stream erosion, water treatment and filtering, weather monitoring, measuring nitrates, water conservation, and river art. Rivers Project students share the results of their studies, activities and research in their interactive booths. Visiting teachers receive educational packets prior to the Celebration including study questions. Rivers Project students become "teachers" or mentors for younger students.

The second part of the program involves breakout presentations by professionals and River Project students. Students report on their projects throughout the day, developing their public speaking and presentation skills.

Finally, special programs by motivational speakers, theater groups, storytellers, songwriters, chemists, and naturalists (often with live animal shows) are scheduled throughout the day.