Recap of services previously offered through Sweetwater Collaborative:
For many years, we offered hands-on community-based workshops where people learned together while helping install sustainable systems. Projects offered include planting native and Mediterraean gardens, fruit trees and food forests, and installing raingardens, laundry to landscape greywater systems, and water harvesting tanks.
We were committed to bringing innovative water sources to feed local landscapes that produce beauty and abundance yields for those in our community. However, workshops have been paused for the last few years we were still working. This information is currently for historic reference.
During workshops, volunteers worked as a team with others in the outdoor space of a residence, organization, or business. We used basic gardening tools to dig and shape the earth to allow water to slow, spread, and sink into the landscape. We often planted natives or trees. We sometimes added compost, mulch, or rock. In certain workshops, like laundry to landscape greywater installations or putting in rainwater barrels or tanks, we worked with pipe, which might have been PVC, ABS, HDPE (landscape tubing) or Blu-lock. We had wheelbarrows for moving mulch and other materials. Somebody instructed novices how to work with tools with which they were unfamiliar. We always had a safety demonstration at the beginning of each workshop. When we could, we paired volunteers with someone who knew more about the process they were involved in.
There was always at least one skilled instructor on site, and usually there were two. Instructors had taken a water harvesting certification course or water harvesting apprentice training or had skills equal or comparable to those learned in those courses.
The workshops typically ran for four or five hours during which 6-8 volunteers were directed in the work; we also led min-workshops for 2-3 hours. There was a lot of educational content to each workshop, be it about why certain plants were picked for that site, or how to use a bunyip (water level). Hosts were asked to provide snacks and drinks for the volunteers. Volunteers needed to sign a waiver of liability. We always had a first aid kit among our other tools and supplies. Our first aid kit included dust masks, earplugs, eye protection, and basic first aid materials like bandages and band aids. Sweetwater Collaborative supplied all the tools and taught people how to use them if they didn't have that knowledge. We spoke periodically about what we were doing, what we had accomplished, and next steps. We tried to take photos before, during and after the workshop. We cleaned up together as a crew.
Our workshops were social work parties that created dramatic results. Volunteering lowered the cost of doing these projects. The workshops brought knowledge of environmental stewardship into the mainstream. We reduced water demand, reduced energy demand, and localized food production. The workshop model made “going green” affordable and improved quality of life for the participants as well as the hosts who got a new system in their home.
Thank you to all of our hosts and volunteers over the years!