2026

For 20 years, the HMK Children’s Water Festival has empowered over 18,000 children across Haliburton, Muskoka and Kawartha Lakes regions to become lifelong Water Heroes — equipped to protect our watersheds.

This annual event inspires and teaches elementary students of the region about water ecology and water stewardship in their homes, classrooms, and communities. Teachers with their students, alongside secondary and post secondary student and community volunteers share in hands-on learning via some of 40+ experiential activity centres. We cooperate with 8-16 other conservation organizations annually who offer research-based information through hosting a third of our relevant activity centres.

The HMK Children’s Water Festival is operated by Friends of Ecological and Environmental Learning, grassroots, volunteer-run charity based in Haliburton. We have hosted the festival since 2005. We’re not just about education; we’re also about inspiring futures.

The Ontario Wildlife Foundation’s commitment to promoting conservation education in meaningful ways has been an important part of our growth in the past. Several learning activities focused on the connections between wildlife habitat, watershed ecosystem health, human health and stewardship have been developed with support of the OWF in the past.
For the 2026-2027 school year, we are seeking OWF support to grow, more than triple the reach and impact of our programs for schools. We aim to better connect with all 41 elementary schools of the local school board through our Water Hero hybrid programs outreach and development and distribution of resource kits to them. We will also be able to pilot the loan of learning activity centres focused on habitat protection to schools.

For a generation, HMK Children’s Water Festival has transformed curiosity into commitment. Through hands-on experiences, children discover the importance of water, aquatic and shoreline habitats and develop the skills to protect them for generations. By engaging over 1,000 children across our region annually, over 18,000 through our 20-year history, we have cultivated lifelong Water Heroes who are equipped to lead efforts to protect our watersheds and ecosystems for generations to come.

Water and understanding water systems as individuals, families and communities is key to life and so of vital importance to include in our public education experiences. Climate change, pollution, and Wildlife habitat depletion are urgent challenges. Our festival programs equip children with actionable knowledge to tackle these issues and foster a deep connection to nature that translates into sustainable behaviours and better protected environments.

84% of students attending last year’s Festival said they want to keep learning about water and the environment after the festival and all attending parents and volunteers reported having a positive experience and learning something new about water stewardship.

Through all our activities last year, we reached over 1100 children, 200 parents and teachers and 250 volunteers. With the extension of our schools programs, we will develop resource kits for all 41 regional elementary schools through which we aim to connect with not only 800 students at the 2026 Fall Festival but at least triple that number of students with our hybrid Spring 2027 Water Heroes programs. We will also pilot a program of loaning a few activity centres to 2 schools we have started lining up this relationship with and reach another estimated 200 students that way this year and set up a system for expanding this impact in future years.

We will also update the educational quiz on the “take the challenge” page of our waterheroes.ca website and with OWF’s support, include information about habitat protection of shoreline and aquatic environments and measures children, youth and families can take along these lines.

Investment in the project this year will supply tools to students, teachers and schools to more readily keep learning about water stewardship flowing, to be able to access our resources and our Spring Hybrid Water Hero programs better. OWF support will be key to growing our impact to more than triple the number of students experiencing important aquatic habitat conservation and protection education through our programs.