SMRWA Executive Director Attends Training
Funded by Chesapeake Bay Funders Network
Executive Director Bob Lewis attended the two-day training earlier this month with staff and Board members from thirty-six other regional watershed groups. Networking between the groups is an important feature of these ongoing training sessions. Accommodations were bare-bones but the staff at the North Bay facility, where approximately fifty people attended intensive sessions on program evaluation methods, were exceptionally pleasant and informative.
The January 9-10 training was the third of nine training opportunities in a three-year funding cycle ending in June of 2010. The St. Mary's River Watershed Association was awarded a Tier II (there are two cash funded levels and Tier III recipients receive only free trainings as well as small targeted grant opportunities) Capacity Building Grant which has a value of approximately $20,000 to $25,000 in each of three years - June 2007 through June 2010. Part of that award was a cash grant of $14,000, the rest being made up in training and networking opportunities.
Board members Joe Anderson, Nancy McAllister, and Richard Holden, along with Bob Lewis, attended the three-day training this past fall at Shepherdstown West Virginia where a variety of workshops in seven tracks were offered to more than 350 attendees. Member Bob Elwood, Vice President Bob Paul, and Bob Lewis attended the first two-day June 2007 training session at Great Falls Maryland in June 2007.