Watershed Workshop

Our Watershed Workshop serves River Families by inspiring them to act for drinkable rivers. We refer to River Families as all life forms that are within a (sub)watershed where water is, like a bloodline, their shared lifeline. 

Drinkable Rivers has designed a Watershed Workshop series to prepare and energise River Families: diverse groups of people from local authorities, organisations, and communities across one or more catchment areas who want to turn the vision of a drinkable river into concrete, shared action.

This series helps participants move from inspiration and challenge exploration to practical initiatives they can start testing together. After walking over 20,000km along ten rivers, many from source to sea, and by staying connected with the River Families, we consistently identified two needs:

  1. People were attracted by the idea of a drinkable river, but face a need to translate this to their daily life, organisations, and local communities’ practices.
  2. Unleashing the potential to collaborate as a watershed community, to connect people within the same riverbasin system and providing tools how they can find each other and collaborate.

The online Watershed Workshop includes four learning modules:

Set-up of the Watershed Workshop

The Watershed Workshop can be given in different set-ups:

  • it can be conducted online divided over four online gatherings;
  • or in person over two days.

Each Watershed Workshop includes three recurring parts:

Inspiration (short and practical)

A concise segment amongst others based on the Drinkable Rivers Action Guide, using concrete examples (e.g., build a culture of care, prevention is better than cure, align ourselves in the water cycle).

Collaborative learning (structured)

A guided exercise that helps the group go deeper and move toward action (e.g. “5 Whys” to uncover root causes; translating insights into “How might we…” questions and a shared challenge statement; generating and refining solution ideas).

Connection and peer support (so the network sustains itself)

Participants actively bring support questions, offer help, and set up follow-ups—so collaboration continues between sessions, rather than Drinkable Rivers “owning” the network.

Want to co-organise a Watershed Workshop in your sub-watershed?

Contact us
Visit Drinkable Rivers