Hello once again! It’s been another busy month but I’ll try and give you a flavour of some of the things I’ve been up to since I last posted a blog.
So to start things off, last month ended with some excellent Outdoor First Aid training. I hope that I never have to use it of course, but the trainers were brilliant and attending an outdoor course made potential first aid scenarios a whole lot more realistic, even if it meant treating (pretend) casualties on a boggy moor during the heaviest April showers possible! Following on with the personal development theme, I also attended a river invertebrate training day alongside some anglers who will go onto routinely survey and monitor river invertebrates in their local burn. Our river samples had a good selection of river mini-beasties, such as mayflies, caddis-flies, shrimps and stoneflies, and I’m just fascinated by how tiny cased caddis-flies can be (sorry, no pictures – too tiny!). River invertebrates can be used as indicators of river health and volunteers monitoring rivers on a regular basis help to report pollution incidences quickly. And to finish off the training theme, I also attended an all-important funding and fundraising training day with TCV, something which I hope to apply before the end of the year – fingers crossed for success!
Our river invertebrate sample
Taking an opportunity to get out of the office, I had a busy few days in early May (not that you would believe it given the temperature!) assisting the Clyde River Foundation team to deliver their Trout-in-Transition project, a project where children studied various river characteristics from water velocity to river substrate and river invertebrates to river depth before analysing their data in the classroom. This was a great opportunity for me to engage secondary school children with rivers, as well as visiting different rivers across the catchment. I worked with a number of groups to collect data on river substrate and whilst the novelty of wearing waders remained high throughout, picking stones out of the hand numbing water didn’t – something which put my skills of motivating others to the test!
The Glengonnar – a river with high levels of lead due to previous mining in the surrounding hills (many of which are actually spoil heaps).
Collecting data on river substrate
Students hard at work in the Mousewater – an example of a channelised river
Moving away from schools, I’ve also been fortunate enough to recently attend the official launch of the Statement of Ambition for Adult Learning by Mike Russell, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning with the Scottish Government. This was a great opportunity to soak up the enthusiasm for the future of adult learning in Scotland and to be reminded of importance of lifelong learning to communities, as the wider benefits of individual learning spill over into family, community and work life, the economy and ultimately society.
On that note, it’s back to developing learning and wider community engagement opportunities for the Clyde River Foundation.
Thanks for reading and see you in the summer!