Coalition building in Arizona’s water insecure communities
Community organizer Daniela Sherrill has worked on two successful efforts to raise the minimum wage for workers in both Coconino and Pima counties. She is now bringing the skills she honed during those campaigns to Arizona Water for All (AW4A), a pillar of the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. Led by Amber Wutich, AW4A is a program aimed at increasing water security for the state’s most water insecure households and communities.
“I have experience organizing around the state. I also studied sustainability as an undergraduate at Northern Arizona University and have always felt connected to the mountains and the desert,” says Sherrill, who was raised in Phoenix. “My minor was in civic engagement, which opened my mind to new ways of thinking about the world. I'm really thankful for that program because I learned the importance of relationship building and deep community connections early on.”
Those coalition building skills turned out to be a great fit for AW4A, where Sherrill is focusing on building a partner network – the Arizona Water for All Network – as well as developing a water leadership program for youth from water insecure communities in southern Arizona.
A first event for the Arizona Water for All Network
In July, the AW4A team held their first official event, a bilingual Community Water Forum in Nogales, Arizona, in collaboration with Border Community Alliance and Water For People. The event was focused on facilitating conversations on important water issues between historically underrepresented residents and government officials, including the mayor of Nogales and representatives from the US Consulate.
“I am really proud of the way the Nogales meeting turned out. We provided time for people to talk about their most pressing water concerns as well as their ideal water future,” says Sherrill. “I don't think we offer enough spaces for people to listen to each other and voice their worries and the solutions they would like to see.”
The relationship building that Sherrill has been doing was vital to the success of the convening. The team was able to bring people together because of the work they’d already done to develop connections in Nogales. The gathering surfaced a variety of issues ranging from safe drinking water to binational groundwater management.
“The primary building blocks for the Arizona Water for All Network are the trusting and mutually uplifting connections we are developing,” says Sherrill. “Without those, it’s impossible to get any meaningful work done. It was a team effort and I'm really proud of the work we did together, and hope we will be able to do similar events in other parts of the state.”
The AW4A team has established a partner network lead at both the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University to round out geographic representation across the state and to ensure that local needs are being met. They are also partnering with a variety of groups with on-the-ground connections in water insecure communities throughout Arizona.
“My number one takeaway from the Nogales event is that people want to be involved in creating the solutions to the problems that they're witnessing,” says Sherrill. “Unfortunately, they have been made to feel like they can't be involved or don't have the resources. People feel this deep connection with their communities and they want to have a functioning place to live, which of course includes access to safe and affordable water. We are here to support those goals.”
Developing a youth water leadership academy
Throughout the development of the partner network, Sherrill was also hearing from residents who wanted more opportunities for the youth in their community to grow their leadership capacity, particularly when it comes to water.
“When we were doing our initial landscape analysis of what resources existed around engagement in water decision making, we were getting over and over that people wanted more programming and career development and just more resources for the youth in their communities in general.”
Working with partners at the Rural Community Assistance Corporation and the Environmental Defense Fund, AW4A will be launching a water leader program in Arizona.
“The official title is the Water Leadership Institute: Community Beyond Boundaries, and that is because we're pursuing a transboundary approach modeled after water leadership institutes in New Mexico and California,” says Sherrill. “This is the very first one we are piloting in Arizona, which I'm very excited about.”
The new program will build upon a youth water leadership curriculum that has not been updated in some years. The AW4A team created an advisory board of external partners who have experience working with youth in southern Arizona. The board will help to make the curriculum more current, as well as regionally and culturally specific to southern Arizona. The team will also incorporate many of the place-based challenges and solutions from the Nogales Community Water Forum.
“This program is focused on hands-on engagement and building a sense of place, which we will do through field trips and meeting with mentors and water leaders that have been working in southern Arizona,” says Sherrill. “There's also an emphasis on community knowledge exchanges and creating a shared space for people to connect and learn from one another. We want young folks to be able to feel empowered to participate in these spaces that are oftentimes very exclusionary.”
With that in mind, the program is primarily designed to bring together Indigenous, people of color and low-income youth community members. The AW4A team will also connect participants with mentors who can support them if they decide to pursue water leadership through traditional avenues including working at a utility or as a council member.
“We have a session on leadership and water. We also have a session on storytelling and telling your own story,” says Sherrill. “The idea for the program is that there is no one way to be a leader, and what's important is that you feel as though you have the power to shape your world and your community.”
The program will begin its pilot phase in September, and the AW4A team is in the midst of recruiting participants. The target age group is 18 to 24 year olds from water insecure communities who will participate in a six hour session once per month over a three month period between September and December this year. There will be two concurrent cohorts – one in South Tucson and another in Nogales – with a maximum of 20 participants per cohort.
“We're very much in the midst of recruiting, connecting with teachers and others who can recommend their students,” says Sherrill. “I'm excited to see how this turns out, it's been a big dream of mine to be able to work with people in Arizona this way. To have had the opportunity to work so closely on developing the curriculum and coming up with our vision has been amazing.”
Learn more and reserve a spot with the Water Leadership Institute.
Related:
- Arizona Water for All: Building a partner network
- Arizona Water for All: Leveraging social relationships to drive meaningful change in water-insecure communities