Niagara Region, in partnership with Brock University, the City of St. Catharines, Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, and Ontario Power Generation, will host the 19th annual Niagara Children’s Water Festival from May 9-13, 2022.

Niagara Children’s Water Festival is a unique opportunity for grade three and four students from all municipalities across Niagara to engage in a variety of activity centres created to educate students about the importance of our most valuable natural resource: water. The goal of the festival is to empower our future decision makers to initiate behavioural changes within their homes, schools and communities.

Building on the virtual festival concept initiated in 2020 and 2021, this five-day educational festival includes a week’s worth of unique live-streamed and pre-recorded activity centres, web activities and program resources created by real life professionals in the fields of water treatment, science, engineering and conservation.

Once again, this year’s virtual festival is designed to allow teachers to “create their own festival” by choosing the activity centres they wish to experience with their students based on their learning objectives and schedule.

Niagara Children’s Water Festival first moved to a virtual format in 2020 when the in-person festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, more than 7,000 students – across more than 400 classes – have participated in the virtual Water Festivals, providing excellent feedback for the educational programming. The Niagara Children’s Water Festival Steering Committee has continued to grow and evolve the festival and aims to provide an engaging and entertaining Water Festival for 2022.