Since 2005, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Indiana (TMMI), partnering with the EarthEcho Water Challenge (formerly World Water Monitoring Challenge), has offered a water monitoring program to more than 18,000 local elementary school students. In November 2015, TMMI team members helped about 600 6th grade students from 27 classes take water quality samples at approximately 100 different lakes, rivers and streams across southwestern Indiana.
The program begins with classroom training that focuses on the importance of clean water to ecosystems, sources of water pollution, and basic sampling techniques.
Then the students are taken to one of the 100 different local watersheds to conduct sampling to collect and analyze water. All monitoring data is uploaded to the WWMC database.
TMMI also sponsors a poster contest for 5th-grade students in Gibson, Vanderburgh, Posey, and Warrick counties during Earth Week. Students are asked to design a poster focusing on why we need clean water and how to protect the earth’s water resources. The winning design is put on a T-shirt given to all 6th grade students who participate in the World Water Monitoring Challenge in the fall.