Ready to Volunteer? Community Partner Highlight: Poweshiek County Soil & Water Conservation

Poweshiek County Soil and Water Conservation District needs your help in protecting land and water resources in our county! The office is located less than 10 miles from Grinnell College, and while there is plenty of hands-on work, hybrid in-person/virtual service is also possible. Read below to learn about the creative range of ways that you can contribute.

Websitehttps://poweshiekcountyswcd.weebly.com/

Mission: The Poweshiek County SWCD is a nonprofit organization that partners with the NRCS and carries out natural resource management programs at the county level. We are Poweshiek residents, landowners and producers who voluntarily stepped up to manage and protect the land and water resources because we want to make Poweshiek County a better place to live.

Needs:

  • Graphic design and web/social media help (a new logo, new brochure design, our informational booth on cover crops updated, web design, and social media outreach).
  • Help with water quality monitoring (sampling and testing).
  • Help with soil conservation programs such as CRP (prairie restoration) review and native plantings.
  • Grant writing for funding to increase our outreach.
  • Assistance with outreach events (staffing the booth, putting together new presentations, organizing lunches).
  • Help with figuring out creative ways to communicate conservation practices (use of drones to show projects such as saturated buffers being constructed?, help with organizing events that benefit the environment?, an educational video on native planting?, compiling the drone footage?) Creative minds wanted!

Training supplied: We offer all training needed, with lots of networking opportunities, chances to shadow commissioners, and the ability to get really hands-on with our work.

Operation information: Across the state, we will be hiring 113 more people in 2022.  Our soil and water conservation efforts are throughout the entire county, and include everything from hands-on water testing, field reviews of CRPs (Cropland Restoration Program, former cropland into prairie land), native seedings, and supervising conservation projects to more outreach/education activities like promoting cover crops at the county fair, at Ag Day, at a Field Day in July, and more if we had help to do more.

Visit the Poweshiek County Soil and Water Conservation District database listing for more details!

More volunteer opportunities with a wide variety of non-profit organizations are available on the Civic Activity Community Partners Database.

By Guinevere Wallace
Guinevere Wallace AmeriCorps Coordinator for Community Engaged Learning Partnerships