I started walking through the cold towards Bard College one early Saturday morning. I was headed to an Ambassadors Workshop hosted by Riverkeeper. I had no idea what to expect. I had never met any of the people in the workshop before and I was alone, representing my school. When I arrived at Bard College I was one of the first people there. I introduced myself to the hosts Ms. Dana Gulley and Mr. Jeremy Cherson, grabbed a nametag, a Water Quality and Citizen Scientists 2014 report and some notepaper and a pencil. I chose to sit not too far away, but not to close and I began to read the report. As people began to arrive, I noticed that I was by far the youngest person there and quickly I began to feel a little bit intimidated. As people began to take their seats and conversations sparked, I noticed that the other people at this workshop were experienced Riverkeeper volunteers who have been activists way longer than I have been. I began to feel increasingly nervous because I was not as experienced as anyone else there. Suddenly the lights dimmed and the presentation began.
The presentation began with a review of Riverkeeper, the organization. Riverkeeper started out as the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association which was founded by a group of fishermen who were concerned by the fast dropping quality of the Hudson River in 1966 under the leadership of Bob Boyle. Tom Whyatt was the first official “Riverkeeper”in the early 70’s when the organization was primarily focused on monitoring the pollution of the Hudson River. Hudson River Fishermen’s Association launched it’s first patrol boat in 1983 and hired John Cronin as the first full time “Riverkeeper”. In 1986 the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association officially changed their name to Riverkeeper.
The point of the first workshop was for us to take our first steps towards becoming actual Riverkeeper ambassadors. In order for us to become ambassadors, we had to be able to convey to our audience in a very short amount of time, what Riverkeeper was. We were given partners and I was partnered with a long time activist Ben Savteur. After 6 minutes every pair had to share their Riverkeeper 101 pitch. Our pitch was…
Riverkeeper is above all, an advocate for the Hudson River. That encompasses a lot of people and a lot of issues around protecting the Hudson River. Our work requires us to be active on many fronts. Some of our work is on the river itself, picking up trash and organizing clean up, campaigning, water quality testing and monitoring. Our work also involves the community and educating civilians to raise awareness for the community involvement. For example, we leave an ambassador workshop with the sole purpose of educating ordinary people. We fight the government in order to keep the river clean, for example, we are currently trying to prevent Indian Point from getting a new permit to continue to use their nuclear reactors and preventing ships from transporting oil down the Hudson River.
We all gave our pitches and gave constructive criticism to each other and began the introduction of the second activity planned. We started out by discussing how to tell a short story. We discussed what qualities seem to keep people listening and how to get your main point across. In the end, we came up with 4 specific rules. Every effective story repeats the central theme in order for people to really understand the point you are trying to get across. The second thing is making sure you relate to the listener. During one point of your Riverkeeper story, you must connect to the listener. The third and final point is to make sure that by the end, make your listeners so moved by your personal story that they want to join Riverkeeper because that is the main reason for the story. After we all went over these rules, we were given 3 minutes to write our stories. After we were all done, we were asked if anyone would like to share. The room was silent and after 30 seconds, (it felt like forever) I raised my hand. I felt very nervous, I was the youngest, least experienced person there and I was going to read my story. I took a breath and I began:
“As long as I can remember, I was always told never to swim in the Hudson River. I was told that is was very polluted and under no circumstances was I allowed to swim in it, not to even mention drink from it. This never made any sense to me. Why is there a ready supply of water right here in Manhattan but nobody is allowed to swim in it? I remember running towards the river, but being stopped by cold thick metal bars that prevented me from reaching the water. Now I am old enough to make a difference I have decided to join Riverkeeper, a non for profit organization. Thanks to Riverkeeper, we are this much closer to cleaning up the Hudson River and with your help, we could finally live in a world where there are no metal bars preventing anyone from swimming. In a world without a polluted Hudson River.”
When I was done, everyone applauded. Ms. Dana said that it was very well crafted and the visual aspect was very compelling.
