Stormwater and Green infrastructure basics online course
Join other community groups and concerned citizens in our new, interactive online course! You’ll learn about:
- What happens to rain when it falls on cities, and how it impacts our water
- The traditional approach to stormwater management
- The green infrastructure approach, its benefits and its challenges.
This course starts with the basics and is aimed at people who have little to no knowledge of this issue. Future courses will go more in-depth on policies and programs to support green infrastructure implementation.
View the course curriculum here. The course will run for four weeks between February 11 and March 11. We estimate it should take between 30 and 60 minutes of your time per week. There are no scheduled class meetings- you can complete the activities when it works for you, and interact with your classmates through the online platform.
Stormwater management might not sound very exciting, but it’s an important issue that affects your community and your local waterbodies. Did you know that non-point source pollution that comes from the rain that falls on cities is the number one source of pollution to many waterbodies in urban areas?
Most of our cities have infrastructure built decades ago, that is failing to protect our water from pollution and which can’t accommodate severe storms, which are expected to increase with climate change. Add to that the fact that we’ve paved over large areas and disrupted the water balance, and urban runoff is a huge challenge for our communities.
Green infrastructure is a different approach to managing runoff, which treats rain as a resource instead of a waste product and manages it close to where it falls. Many communities around the world are embracing this approach and working to restore the natural water balance.
Are you interested in learning more about this issue and what your community is doing? We are looking for people to test out our new online course. This course is designed to get people who have little to no knowledge of this issue up to speed.
The stormwater and green infrastructure basics online course includes:
- Nine short original videos (36 minutes total time) with accompanying presentation slides covering Stormwater 101 and an Introduction to green infrastructure
- Links to additional tools and resources for you to learn more
- Self-assessments to test your understanding
- Short assignments designed to help you investigate your own community’s approach to stormwater management
- A local action planning template to help you create a strategy to advance your community’s progress towards transformative green infrastructure policy.
If this sounds interesting to you, you can access it all for the very low introductory rate of $25 (that’s just over $6/week!). This introductory rate is available for participants who agree to help test this beta version by:
- Proceeding through the training materials
- Completing a short assignment every week
- Filling in the Stormwater Scorecard for your community
- Providing us feedback on the training through a course evaluation
Take advantage of this low price, course rates will increase in the future! If cost is a barrier to your participation, please contact the organizer.
This course is instructed by Clara Blakelock, Water Programs Manager with Green Communities Canada. Clara has been working on engaging people about stormwater management and green infrastructure since 2014. She is the editor of the monthly Umbrella Stormwater Bulletin and co-author of the Soak it up! Toolkit. Clara will be available throughout the course to answer questions, and provide resources and feedback.
Content for this course was developed by Green Communities Canada with support from the Our Living Waters Network. Green Communities Canada and the Canadian Freshwater Alliance are collaborating on projects to advance transformative green infrastructure in Canadian communities.