The following grantees were awarded a Future Leaders of Watersheds (FLOW) grant for the year 2008-2009 by the West Virginia Commission for National and Community Service through a Learn and Serve America grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. The organizations focused on engaging youth in their community to improve watershed health. The Commission awarded $285,987 for the 2008-2009 year.

Cacapon Institute
Morgan, Hardy, Mineral and Hampshire counties
Cacapon Institute will locate and organize adult mentors to engage middle and high school youth into PHLOW - Potomac Headwaters Leaders of Watersheds. The PHLOW teams' youth will identify problems in local watersheds, formulate remedies and take action. They will reflect on their learning, review the challenges and write outcome reports to be published on Cacapon Institute's web page.

Friends of Blackwater
Tucker County
Ten students from Tucker County High School, along with their teachers and North Fork Watershed Protection staff, will work with the WV Department of Natural Resources and the WV Department of Environmental Protection. The students will learn about water quality , participate in water monitoring, tour an acid mine drainage (AMD) water reclamation site and participate in community service related to reducing sediment and improving access. Students will take part in a Watershed Earth Day Celebration and grand opening of projects at a local lake.

Friends of Deckers Creek (FODC)
Monongalia County
30 youth in middle and high school participating
FODC will collaborate with new and existing education programs to give middle and high school students in both Monongalia and Preston counties increased service-learning experiences in watershed health. All participants will build or gain new understanding of watershed health in general, of the Deckers Creek watershed and WV watersheds specifically, and will learn how watersheds are linked to community service and welfare.

Girl Scouts of Shawnee Council
Hardy, Mineral, Hampshire, Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson counties
Youth will discover their local watersheds and will be involved in stream monitoring, seed collecting, trash collection and other projects they develop. They will connect their own watershed into the Potomac River and then into the Chesapeake Bay.

Greenbrier River Watershed Association
Greenbrier County
Greenbrier County’s unique topography presents unique needs around their watersheds. The youth will adopt Davis Spring and learn to maintain and protect the stream, perform stream bank restoration and implement pollution controls. This will develop the middle school students' environmental literacy.

High Rocks for Girls
Pocahontas, Nicholas and Greenbrier counties
This project will engage girls in watershed service-learning through a four-tiered watershed project. The project will allow teenage girls to learn about regional and state water resource issues and empower them to create effective community service opportunities to address watershed threats.

McDowell County Commission with the Wastewater Treatment Coalition of McDowell County
McDowell County
The scope of this program is to increase watershed education and environmental learning. Youth will be provided with service-learning opportunities to focus on the human impact on streams, current issues of straight-piping sewage into watersheds and increased community involvement through outreach and education.

Mountain Resource, Conservation and Development and Indian Creek Watershed Association
Monroe County
High school students in Monroe County will work to develop a watershed project book that will be tested by middle school 4-H clubs. Middle school aged youth will attend a four-week summer camp, gather water quality data and present recommendations to the County Planning Commission.

Oglebay Institute
Marshall, Ohio, Brooke counties
Oglebay Institute's Project FLOW will engage youth in grades 6-12 in service-learning projects focused within the Upper Ohio South watershed. The proposal will support the development of a youth council for Oglebay Institute and a summer FLOW residential camp.

Piney Creek Watershed Association
Raleigh County
Youth Watershed Leadership Program is a service-learning project to educate youth on the importance of Piney Creek Watershed and the Lower New River basin. Service-learning activities will include litter sweeps, rain gardens, stream assessment and monitoring, lake water quality monitoring, and education on sources of pollution.

Potomac Valley Audubon Society
Berkeley and Jefferson counties
Youth will participate in hands-on opportunities to improve their watersheds through service. Activities may include collecting nad propagating native plants at their schools, stream or wetland restoration, water quality monitoring, tours of the school grounds and problem areas for school children, teachers and administrators, and starting a recycling program at their schools.

Step by Step
Kanawha and Lincoln counties
"There is Only One River" brings together 20 youth and a range of adult volunteers from rural Lincoln county and urban Kanawha county to engage in environmental education, water quality testing, stream clean-up events, intergenerational interviews, digital story production and the development of an online media campaign to raise awareness about local watershed issues.

Web of Life (Big Laurel Learning Center)
Lincoln, Logan and Mingo counties
Youth, adult volunteers and parents will participate in stream monitoring events and stream clean-ups. Youth will test for Coliform, bacteria, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, nitrate, pH, phosphate, temperature and turbidity. They will assess water quality by collecting, sorting, counting and identifying benthic macro-invertebrate samples.