Join the Cardboard Kayak Race!

Calling all educators, campers, and community groups to join us and the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance on July 12 for the 2014 Cardboard Kayak Race! Everyone comes by boat to Governors Island for City of Water Day, but only the most creative and humorous mariners make their own zany boats right at the festival. Let your team of kids be among them!

HarborLAB will be providing public paddling programs at City of Water Day and safety support for the cardboard kayak race, as we did last year. We would be happy to help teams of junior high, high school, and college students practice their paddling in the weeks before competing in this unique design-build-paddle event! We and the MWA can also connect you with swim instruction organizations.

For information and registration, please click HERE. To partner with HarborLAB, email edu@harborlab.org.

 

 

 

Join a HarborLAB Google Group!

group

Maybe you have that missing piece of the puzzle to make a HarborLAB program click together! HarborLAB has peer-to-peer email list Google Groups to achieve our goals in Education, Fleet and Infrastructure, Funding, Outreach and Communications, and Safety and Public Events. We encourage volunteers and prospective volunteers to join groups that match their interests, either as active participants or to monitor and stay informed. Feel free to receive updates in digest form, but we hope to keep traffic low and purposeful.

Click on the hyperlinked group names below to sign up!

Education:

Sharing information and ideas to grow and improve HarborLAB’s educational mission and programs in the harbor and watershed (Neversink Reservoir). Share ideas for curricular integration and public programming, educational grants, and other means of serving educators. Join >

Fleet and Infrastructure:

Help build, select, and maintain HarborLAB’s boat fleet, gear stocks, dock, and shoreline infrastructure. Join >

Funding:

Share tips, plans, and ideas for funding HarborLAB, and keeping us on budget. This is the email list for you if you’re interested in seeking sponsors and applying for grants, producing fundraising parties and events, and maintaining fiscal transparency and accountability. Join >

Outreach and Communications:

Help grow HarborLAB through outreach to potential and existing volunteers, community and nonprofit partners, government agencies, and media. We’ll create new website features, a newsletter, postcards, literature, and other ways of building community. Join >

Safety and Public Events:

Help plan and organize HarborLAB’s public events and maintain safety (best practices, equipment, training) across programs. Join >

Coming August Highlights!

perseid

Perseids. Image courtesy of NASA.

HarborLAB is picking up steam this steamy summer! It’s just our first season with a kayak and canoe fleet and we’ve already provided hugely successful public paddling programs and educational enrichment to City of Water Day, the Clearwater Festival, and the Amazing Bronx River Flotilla, in addition to other service activities. We expect to soon have a boat trailer to greatly expand services, and you can help —  please donate by check through our 501c3 fiscal conduit, Earth Day New York, noting HarborLAB in the memo line.

To see a bit of what’s ahead for August, please visit our events list on our Facebook Fan Page:

https://www.facebook.com/HarborLAB/events

Water Sampling! Now that our volunteer base has grown, let’s achieve one of our environmental science goals by restarting participation in a harbor-wide water quality program.

Swim Across America kayak support to help the fight against cancer.

Perseids Paddle! Come see shooting stars by kayak on a Manhattan circumnavigation!

Orchard Beach youth paddle and adult tour around City Island!

And more to come!