Partnership Projects

Ambassadors further engage the community through the program’s partnership project requirement. Ambassadors strive to expand their respective host agencies and NJWAP’s organizational capacity to conduct projects with volunteers and other local groups, thus promoting water quality improvement through community actions. Projects include streams or beaches cleanups, rain garden construction or maintenance, rain barrel workshops, stream restorations, and watershed festivals/environmental awareness events. Facilitating local community involvement with stewardship projects serves to build a network of motivated volunteers to participate in future watershed projects. These initiatives promote long term capacity building, transforming the community as it learns to solve local environmental problems while assisting the NJDEP in addressing nonpoint source pollution on a larger scale.

Would you like to work with an AmeriCorps Ambassador in your Watershed?

There are multiple opportunities to get involved in your local watershed with your Watershed Ambassador.
As specific trainings and/or events are scheduled, they will be listed here. In addition, you can find out what your local Ambassador is up to with the StoryMap or by liking us on Facebook.

A Great Way to Explore the Environmental Field

The New Jersey Watershed Ambassadors Program is an environmental stewardship-oriented AmeriCorps program designed to raise awareness about water concerns. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has hosted the program since 2000, and while the program has evolved over the last 24 years, its main goals have remained the same: promote watershed stewardship through education and direct community involvement, and monitor the health of our waterways through conducting stream assessments.

Twenty (20) Watershed Ambassadors serve from partner host agency locations, with one located in each of New Jersey’s Watershed Management Areas. From Sussex to Cape May counties, Ambassadors serve with all sectors of society to improve the quality of New Jersey’s waterways by:

• • educating the public on watershed science.
  • implementing community green infrastructure.
  • encouraging them to get involved in local stewardship actions.
  • stewardship projects partnering with local organizations and community volunteers.
  • performing habitat and biological assessments following DEP monitoring protocols to monitor the health of their WMA’s streams.

Throughout the program, extensive training in highly sought-after skills in the environmental field is provided, including ArcGIS, fieldwork experience, grant writing, project management, green infrastructure and science communication. Members exit the program prepared to further their career in the environmental field.

“AmeriCorps Week is a celebration of All Things AmeriCorps and is celebrated nationally throughout the country! For more information about AmeriCorps Week nationally, you can visit national AmeriCorps Events page. For AmeriCorps Week this year, Watershed and Source Water Ambassadors will be partnering with New Jersey State Parks, Forests and Historic Sites to complete stewardship projects in various parks throughout New Jersey! For more information about these projects please visit https://nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/americorpsweek or contact your local ambassador.”