Plaster Creek Stewards
Grand Rapids, Michigan | January 16, 2025 | Listen on Spotify
Many water organizations offer environmental education and training for the next generation of climate leaders, but what happens when youth age out of these programs? Plaster Creek Stewards is the lead organization of Project GreenER, an adult educational program in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that fosters understanding and builds agency for watershed care. In this episode of At the Water Table, Andrea Lubberts (she/her), Haley Kornoelje, and Matt Hubers reflect on the differences and similarities in working with youth and adults, the importance of accessibility and adaptation in multi-generational programs, and the strategies they used to build trust and effective partnerships. Learn why a more age-inclusive approach is essential to your watershed work!
“I remember sharing some of the heaviness of climate issues as a group and also, on the flipside, the hope that [the group of adult learners] felt by that shared time together, and learning about small actions they can take to combat the climate heaviness that our souls can take on. That was really encouraging.”
— Andrea Lubberts, Plaster Creek Stewards
Transcript
Hannah Mico: So you all have the pleasure of working in the Plaster Creek watershed located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’m curious if you can share what makes that watershed so unique.
Andrea Lubberts: There’s really nothing that makes Plaster Creek special, you know, per se, compared to other urban waters. It’s degraded, it’s been neglected, has a deep history, not unlike other places where Indigenous people have been removed. The forest, you know, cut down and used for development. Farm fields put in, industries roll in, the neighborhoods … It’s the same story across America. But on the other hand, Plaster Creek is unique and it is special. We live here, it’s our watershed. It has a history, it has a story that’s unique to just Plaster Creek. And the people that live here do care about it and are learning to care more and more about it. The other thing that’s unique is that it has a Christian university here. We take a lot of responsibility for the harm that we’ve done, but we also want to take responsibility for restoring and rebuilding relationships here.
Haley Kornoelje: Plaster Creek is a small tributary that flows into the Grand River in the southwest lower portion of or the southwest region of the lower peninsula of Michigan. And in our region, we’re in the Great Lakes basin. We’re in a rolling topography with no contrast. That’s something that made our area really easy to develop into farmland. So the history of our place has involved a lot of, like Andrea mentioned, farmland, or clearing forests to make farmland, and now to build the city of Grand Rapids. Geologically, the Michigan basin has these layers of bedrock that are covered in this wonderful glacial soil, but beneath it is a lot of gypsum. That shaped the interaction between Indigenous folks and European settlers about 200 years ago. It kickstarted the mistreatment of our place and the degradation of our water: the discovery of gypsum and then the mining and development that happened after that.
Hannah Mico: The work that you do, as you’ve already discussed, is fairly focused on both place and people. And through that, you’ve been working to develop various community education and outreach programs. One of those is called Project GreenER which is one of your newer programs. Can you talk a little bit about what inspired Project GreenER and then maybe add on how did you incorporate resident voice into that program?
Andrea Lubberts: We have a Green Team, a high school program in the summer. Each summer, 20-ish kids spend three weeks with us doing watershed restoration work from classroom time to hands in the dirt, planting gardens, collecting seeds, and visiting the watershed. As a result of that program and us talking about it to folks all the time, a lot of adults would say things like, I wish there was something like that for adults. I’d love to get involved in something like that. That’d be so cool. So that was kind of bouncing around in our heads. Like, how could we ever do that? And then we attended River Rally, and I should say that the idea of Green Team actually came from relationships that we had built with folks going to River Rally. So, huge plug for attending River Rally and meeting people and exchanging ideas. But then we went to River Rally in DC and I, with this idea of an adult Green Team, something going on in my head, went to about three or four different talks on groups who are doing this with adults, building community leadership development programs, right? And those programs are just so inspiring and led to us having conversations with River Network people saying, “How can this happen with us? Do you have any manuals or templates or suggestions?” Yeah, conversations started with you, Hannah, actually, and Diana, and led to a lot of support in developing this program. One of the stages was doing a community survey. So we have lots of community partners that we’ve worked with, and we really wanted to get their input on what a program like this might look like. Like, what do they see as perceived needs? And how do they see us being able to step alongside and address some of these? So we surveyed a bunch of folks, got, I guess, 33 responses. And those responses were really helpful in kind of steering us towards what material that we could present, how we could formulate this Project GreenER to meet some of those needs and consider barriers to special considerations that folks might have in this. And it led to some really great avenues for presenting the project too, because then we could go back to these survey respondents and say, “Okay, hey, we made this program. What do you think? Give us your feedback.” We could tweak it a bit. And then we could present it again and say, do you want to help us share it out? And a few of them ended up becoming part of our first cohort or sharing it with their community, which was really helpful. Yeah, I think that was a great way to start. Starting with an idea, but then working with the community leaders to make sure that the idea was on target and what they needed, what they wanted.
Haley Kornoelje: After we did all of that research and listening, what we ended up with was a little bit different than our high school program, which was full time for three weeks straight, very interactive, very outdoors. Because we were in the summer. We were adapting it for an adult learning context where we were meeting in the evenings a couple of times a month, scattered over a season. And we ended up with an eight session class where we were trying to incorporate a lot of not just like lecture-based learning, but a lot of group, team building learning, project-based learning. And then we were able to give each participant a stipend to do their own independent project as part of the work as well. So yeah, it was kind of tweaked. We were trying to keep hold onto our favorite parts of Green Team, which were very place-based, very community oriented, highly connected to our work and to our vision for the watershed, also bending over backwards sometimes to meet people in a way that was workable for adults.
Andrea Lubberts: And one fun aspect of trying to meet them where they’re at is holding the class out in the community. So we’re part of Calvin University and we’re at kind of the edge of the watershed, so to speak, headwaters here. And the community of Southeast Grand Rapids is what we really wanted to focus our efforts. It’s like a three mile drive. It’s not difficult, but traffic during rush hour, evening traffic. Not ideal. And there’s a wonderful park right in the center of Southeast Grand Rapids called Garfield Park and they have this old lodge. And we got permission to hold our meetings there, which was central. There’s highway access, there’s main roads, there’s bike routes, bus lines. It was an ideal place to hold it and really has been a great way of building our relationship with that park as well and the folks there. So yeah, that was just one aspect of meeting the community where they’re at.
Hannah Mico: Since we’re already talking about it, What are some other ways that you considered accessibility or inclusion? Haley used the phrase bending over backwards to meet folks where they are. So what did that look like for you all as an organization and what were you thinking about when you were making decisions about the program?
Haley Kornoelje: We debated for a long time about which of those accessibility aspects to prioritize. We considered providing childcare. We considered providing a stipend to people. But when we were looking at, you know, how do we maximize the small budget that we have for this pilot and the capabilities that our team has. What we opted for was first of all, to meet outside of, you know, a typical work hours. We were meeting in the evenings so that people with 9 to 5 jobs could attend. And that was also something that our community listening said would work. When we asked people, do you want to meet on weekends? Do you want to meet in the evenings during the day? People said evenings. And then since we were meeting kind of over dinner time, we decided to provide dinner every time. And that was a major win for our group. It felt like it was a really awesome way for people to get to know each other, just have casual conversation before we dove into content. We did provide transportation assistance to folks. We had some money set aside to provide bus passes, which like Andrea mentioned would work really well with our location. That central location we chose intentionally like Andrea mentioned. And we did in recruiting carefully, discerning how to spread the message about this opportunity, rather than just putting it on our social media, which we know has kind of a limited reach, we gave information to a few trusted partners in our watershed community to share with their people so that hopefully it would get in the hands of the folks who we really wanted to offer that opportunity to.
Matt Hubers: I’d like to add too that this program is kind of unique in that it is for everyone. I think education like this is often offered for experts, for people who are working in a certain area. Here, we’re really offering this program for anyone who wants to learn, anyone who wants to be part of their community, who wants to be engaged in their community. And so we have a lot of people, people of all ages, different races, genders, you know, we have people who just, who live in a neighborhood and want to be part of making it better. And I think that’s really unique about this program. It becomes very accessible that way, just for anyone who wants to learn. I myself, unlike a lot of our staff, I don’t have a background in biology or environmental science. I’m a communications guy, which is great, but it means there’s a lot for me to learn there. And I’ve really appreciated through programs like this being able to learn from my lay person standpoint. so we really wanted this program to be available for people who might want to learn for their career, but also just people who want to learn who want to be part of something bigger.
Hannah Mico: Thank you for that context. Shifting back a little bit, you all talked about the original Green Team program, which is for high schoolers and kind of making that adaptation to Project GreenER for adults. What have you learned about working with adult learners or doing adult capacity building versus working with that high school or youth age group? What feels different about that? What kinds of feedback do you get from them? How are you shifting the way that you talk about these issues with adults.
Matt Hubers: The Green Team has been going on for over 10 years now, and we have gotten a lot of feedback. It’s always super fun to see the kids come in for three straight weeks. It’s three straight weeks where they’re paid to be part of our team. Basically, they come and they get a crash course on watershed ecology on native plants on how to install a rain garden, how to maintain gardens, things like that. We give them a tour of our watershed. And then we put them to work. And there’s something really great about that. I think we have a lot of kids who are just learning that they can have some influence in the world. They can have some autonomy. They can influence change and, for them, it’s really cool to see how they grow in that way. Working with adults, we’re seeing people who are in slightly different life stages. And so we have adults who kind of know they can have some sort of responsibility in their space. They’re feeling that weight of responsibility even. We have people who are homeowners who might rent homes, they might drive in the watershed, they might have dogs they need to clean up after, where they’re feeling much more responsibility for the world around them and wanting to do something about that. And so we’re seeing adults who come in kind of ready to do projects to get their hands dirty and make a change where they are. These adults are a little more ready to engage in community. We get to see them developing skills that They’re applying outside of their time with us, which is really exciting.
Haley Kornoelje: Matt highlighted really well the differences that we noticed between the two groups and there definitely are plenty of differences. But one thing that probably shouldn’t have surprised us, but maybe did as we reflected is there’s also a ton of similarity. Like these are still people with a lot of curiosity. We noticed how the major similarity between the two groups is just their desire for community and for belonging. And obviously those two groups come at that need for belonging from a very different place. High schoolers, you often get a different dynamic in a group where the first couple of weeks, they’re really nervous and insecure. And then by the end, there’s these strong friendships and these cool bonds. Whereas with adults, we got to see all these people with such different stories and lived experiences come together and from even the first night, like really invest in each other and get to know each other. But that’s what we love about working with both of those groups is just getting to know these personalities and seeing how there’s so much room for connection that people might not realize until you’ve put them all in the same room together. And we really love that both of these programs are just the opportunity that being outside together brings in like investing in your place. It’s like a shared, I don’t know, it bonds people in a really fun way.
Hannah Mico: Thank you. I have the pleasure of being in a lot of the Project GreenER sessions. And I remember the very first session when folks were introducing themselves and you all asked, why are you here? One of the most shocking things to me was hearing how folks were sharing that they felt isolated, not connected to other people who cared about the things they did. So I felt so encouraged in a group of adults that they were willing to be vulnerable and shared that that was one of the driving reasons they wanted to connect through a program like this, of like having that relationship and having that kind of combat to isolation I just wanted to reflect on that because that was one of the things that moved me most in that very first session and that carried through as a theme for the entire program.
Andrea Lubberts: Thanks for bringing up Hannah. That’s a really important memory to reflect on. I also remember just like a few many sharing some of the heaviness of climate climate issues, right, as a group and also on the flip side, the hope that they felt by that shared time together and learning about small things that they could do, small actions they can take to combat that climate heaviness that our souls can take on. And as a group, that was really encouraging. Thanks for that memory.
Hannah Mico: Yeah, thank you, Andrea. As we were ideating on concepts for this podcast and what to ask you all, one of the things that I pulled on was how often I hear that we need to be working with youth and preparing the next generation to work on issues like water or climate change. And I hear less and less ways to keep those youth engaged after they’ve been engaged that first time. So if we keep focusing on the next generation, when are we holding the previous generations close in that work or keeping them engaged? I was curious if you all have any thoughts on that kind multi-generational approach now that you house both of these programs and are working with two different generations almost every year now across those kinds of topics.
Andrea Lubberts: I thought one of the things I was so excited about with our first cohort was that one of the team members was a Green Team member. Like he was one of our first Green Team members like 12 years ago. And in the meantime, he’s gone to college and gotten his degrees and he’s working with a local firm on engineering and trail building and, you know, green stuff in his community. And is very much a community-based worker and also very busy. But that was so hopeful to me that he was so engaged that he wanted to continue his learning and continue his involvement with this as an adult, right? And he brought friends with him. So, a few others came to the group with them and that was just so fun to share their network and their joy and their enthusiasm. But they were like the young ones in the group, but they were, I mean, we’re talking like generations like high school versus adult, but within the adult age group, there’s quite a few generations represented there too. So within our cohort of 10 to 12 people we had, I mean, I guess we didn’t ask everyone’s ages, but we definitely had folks that were close to or retired all the way through like mid-career folks to early career folks. And their differences in perspectives, but also shared experiences was just amazing and very, bonding in the way that they respected each other and listened to each other was so encouraging and that all these different age groups can work together and can carry this interest throughout our lives as our careers develop and change through the different seasons. So anyway, was a really fun aspect of the multi-generational work.
Haley Kornoelje: Adult learners, like we’ve said, they bring a lot more lived experience, a lot more history and connection to their place, which offers like a depth and a richness to shared learning that maybe isn’t there with high schoolers. So that was an awesome dynamic for us to learn from them as well.
Hannah Mico: Just to dive in a bit deeper, how are you all thinking about iterating this program over time so it remains responsive to the community, especially as, you know, even on a hyper-local landscape, we see a lot of shifts year to year, election cycle to election cycle, folks’ priorities shift. Obviously the impacts of climate change and water issues are always changing year to year as well. So how do you all plan to stay responsive and continue centering that community priority and voice?
Matt Hubers: So for us, really, there is a lot of change going on, but in some ways, not a lot is changing. I think we’re still, no matter what happens, we’ll always be in this watershed, right? And while we’ve done a lot of work to help Plaster Creek, there’s still a lot of work to do. And, a lot of things can change on that more macro scale. But I think the people are often the same. We’re finding there are a lot of people in our community who care. A lot of people want to be part of reconciliation, part of restoration. And I don’t think that’ll change a whole lot. We just put together our cohort for the spring. And we actually had to turn a lot of people down, we’ll put them on a waiting list. But it’s just really, really hard when you see so many people who are so excited to be part of this. And so I don’t anticipate that desire to change in our community, especially with groups like Plaster Creek Stewards, like WMEAC, LGROW, we have so many groups in this area actually that care about our environment, which is really great. And we’re seeing more and more people in our community starting to care too. And so I anticipate the change that comes with time to just be increased interest, increased involvement. If not with us, then with other groups with being part of a community in that way.
Andrea Lubberts: Thanks, Matt, for summing up those things. As you were talking, I thought of a few other things. There was a note here in our staff conversations about how we try to survey the group as we’re going. So we try to survey them after every class. Like, how did it go? What did you learn? What did you wish we’d covered? How could we improve? How could we improve? What surprised you? And then not too much, just like three quick questions just to snapshot check in with them. And then there’s a final survey. And we try to equip them with the knowledge that we want to respond to their comments. And it seemed that from the feedback last time, like I talked about before, there’s so much opportunity. There’s so many different ways this program could morph to respond to needs. Right now, our subject matter, we can touch on things and we try to give them a survey of watershed restoration in eight weeks. We could do a whole eight week survey just on trees or on native plant propagation or garden design or all the myriad of other ways that folks can use their skills and their abilities to take part in watershed restoration. It’s not just native plant design and gardening. There’s so many more, like advocacy, the community engagement piece, education, taking part in community leadership, becoming parts of boards. Being equipped with the knowledge of what’s going on in Plaster Creek and then taking that to their community decision makers would be an excellent course, right? A great way to equip folks to take action. So yeah, to your point, there’s lots of different directions that this course could morph, could grow. So right now we’re doing a second round and we’ve tweaked some things, we’ve changed some things, we’ve dropped a few things that we thought last time maybe didn’t hit as strongly and there were things that we wanted to do more of. So we’ve shifted it a bit and I think we’re open to changing those further or even growing and, if the time and the people are right, you know, growing the course in new directions too. So I’m hopeful that it’ll continue to fit what the community is looking for as much as we can. I mean, of course you could also grow it with partners, right? And working with partners so that, you know, they can share their knowledge and expertise when that’s what the community needs. So, wow, it could just go and go.
Haley Kornoelje: As we think about, like Matt said, we had to turn down a lot of people. We’re like, man, are there ways to engage these folks who have demonstrated interest in programs like this? If we can’t offer a full scale, like, you know, several month long workshop style situation. So, you know, what if we offer mini courses and, or seminars or, or more neighborhood workshops? Like if, if we’re offering these things and people are really excited about them. Maybe that means we need to do some more listening and think about other ways to adapt for ways that require less resources for us, since this is a kind of a high investment project for us. So it’s just the beginning, which is really exciting.
Matt Hubers: I think it should be said too, I don’t know really where it fits in. So Project GreenER itself is very, I don’t want to say informal, because it is formal. You get a certification for doing it. But it is so discussion-based. It it not come sit for a lecture like you might. We are part of an academic institution, but we don’t really run in a way where you sit for a lecture, you take a test kind of thing. It’s very conversational. We want to know what people are thinking about. We want to know what’s important to them and their communities. And each person then gets to put together a project based on their ideas. And so in a way, you know, we’re kind of providing the structure, but in terms of meeting a community’s needs, that’s really what the members of the cohort are doing. They kind of are given that they’re enabled in that way. They’re given that autonomy to be active within their community in the way they see fit.
Hannah Mico: I actually have an emerging question for you, although anyone could chime in. A lot of groups that River Network works with reflect on how they are struggling to have this much community interest in their programs, at times clamoring to get folks to sign up for something like this that they might be offering. But you all don’t seem to have that problem. And I think that could probably be attributed to a number of things. But I wanted to ask you, what kinds of outreach strategies are you using? What kind of partners are you tapping on to get the word out about this that’s leading to this kind of success and response and interest?
Haley Kornoelje: I’ll get started and then I’m sure Matt will have lots to say, but I think to sum it up overall, it’s really tied back to our deeply community-rooted work that we’ve been doing for 15 years. I think the fact that we have a long list of partners, like, I mean, we can tell you specifics how that looks, but, we wouldn’t have the response that we do if we didn’t have a long list of people to tap. Whenever we had something like this to offer, that we didn’t already have existing relationships with who said like, I, you know, I know Plaster Creek Stewards does good work and there’s lots of interest in their program. So I do want to share this out. So I think that has been a lot of trust building with our community, which is something we’re always still growing into and learning more of how to do better.
Matt Hubers: Yeah, and I think it’s hard to say because I think a lot of what we have now is kind of an accumulation of what’s been going on for 15 years. we’re very active in schools and going to community events and working with businesses, other local organizations. We take that networking part really seriously. So for us, we have a lot of partners and a lot of those partners aren’t necessarily experts in what we do and environmental work in general.
Andrea Lubberts: This last time when we wanted to share out the Project GreenER description and get people to start signing up and finding out who would be interested for another round, we made a list of community partners that we work with. And over the years, that list has gotten quite diverse based on the fact that water touches everyone, right? Like water is important for drinking, water is important for recreation, natural areas, green spaces are important to lots of communities, affordable housing. Yeah, it’s important for lots of different aspects of our community life. There’s a few different, say committees or groups that we’re a part of. And we often wear our environmental hat in those communities, whereas the other folks sitting around the table are wearing school or housing or health. They come from different fields, but we come into those same conversations because we’re concerned about community health and community well-being. And for us, we’re bringing our environmental self to that group. But those folks are all bringing different aspects of the neighborhood to those groups. So they make great partners and over the years you develop relationships. So whether they’re neighborhood associations or corridor improvement groups or business chambers, all have their own networks too. So they know people who are interested in trees, right? So anyway, we send this out to them and then they share it out and that just spreads it further. And then of course we put on Facebook too. So that gets the random people from like, three watersheds away. We’re like, well, okay, you’re gonna go on our wait list, but thanks for your interest. It’s great to know that there’s people all over West Michigan that are interested and would want to even travel into Plaster Creek for a class like this.
Hannah Mico: Thanks Andrea. Can you all talk a little bit about the projects? You said participants get a stipend to do a project. What have some of those projects been? Are folks working together on those? Are the participants supporting each other’s projects? Like we’ve talked a lot about that relationship building within the program. How is that like connectivity piece of the projects demonstrating both their learning and also their relationships within?
Haley Kornoelje: It was a lot of fun to see people brainstorm and come up with these unique ideas. At the last session of our first cohort, each person gave a little spiel about their project, introduced it, which was really sweet. And they all encouraged each other. And then we kind of said, all right, go do it. And then we stopped meeting. And it’s been also a good learning experience for us to see, you know, how we encourage people to actually follow through on those projects. So we didn’t successfully have every participant in our first round complete a project. We’ve tweaked a little bit about how we’re going to do that in the second round. But for the ones that did successfully follow through, we saw a lot of them, it was a lot of using their existing kind of networks and communities and places to meet a need or fill a gap that existed and that they specifically were well suited to address, which is what we hoped, right? That all these people would have their own spaces that we don’t have connections to. So for example, one of our participants has been transforming her front yard with native plants for several years. And she had this dream of converting this one space that she hadn’t gotten to yet. And so she’s been talking with her neighbors about it and her neighbors are getting excited. And I got to meet with a few of them after she, you know, designed this, dreamt up this new garden and involved her kids in designing it, involved our student interns in installing it with her help. So that was a really fun one. And it’s been fun to see the ripple effects in her neighborhood. One participant did some work at her community garden, which is a strong community that she was already plugged into and invited the rest of the participants to this event that was happening at the garden that I wish I could have gone to. And it sounds like she was plugging in and supporting some programs that were already existing and she hoped to continue. Probably the most exciting project for us to just watch unfold because of the logistics that were behind it was one of the participants works for a big corporate supermarket chain in town. He at one of the stores locally within our watershed had this big idea to save some native plants that were going to be destroyed because of a construction project nearby, move them to one of the supermarket stores and coordinate this big effort where his coworkers were involved. He was inviting other Project GreenER participants and people were in the email thread like, I’ll be there at two and like, wish I could help. So that was really fun to see him overcome so many obstacles to do it. And one more that I’ll mention is we had some residents who, a couple who decided they wanted to install a rain garden at the park that they are also like stewards for. It’s an adopt a park program locally in town. So they’ve been stewarding this park for a number of years and have wanted to get a rain garden in and didn’t have the means or the connections to do it until we helped them get connected with the right people in the city and then did the permitting for them. Their stipend paid for the garden. And now they’re hosting, you know, the planting event was open to their neighbors and to the other participants. And then they’re caring for it with help from neighbors too. So that was long-winded because I really love talking about them, but it was super fun to hear all the different niches that they found.
Hannah Mico: It’s so cool to see folks take that actionable step after the program. As a kind of just a free for all, you can think of this as like your end of class time. What do you need? What else do you want to share about Project GreenER or just Plaster Creek Stewards in general?
Matt Hubers: Something we keep touching on, but I don’t think we’ve actually said explicitly is that, so Plaster Creek Stewards, we recognize that there is a of a broken relationship between people and their watershed, that our way of living negatively affects our water. And so not only are we trying to clean up our creek, not only are we trying to make the water better, but we’re trying to fix and restore relationships within the watershed. And so that’s the relationship between us and our water. That’s the relationship between us and other aspects of the natural world. That’s also fixing those relationships. We have a lot of different demographics in this area. We range from urban inner city spaces all the way to rural agricultural areas. And so we have a lot of different people who live here who don’t really realize the connection they have through their water. And so much of what we do is trying to restore those relationships. And Project GreenER is such a great way to do that because this is a way we can pull in people from all those areas and they can meet each other and interact with each other and learn from each other. And that’s just, it’s been such a great way to kind of live out our mission there.
Hannah Mico: Okay, so our closing question for you all before we depart today, what does a just water future look like for you?
Andrea Lubberts: A just water future. My dream for Plaster Creek Watershed is that everybody, no matter where they live, has access, of course, to safe drinking water. That’s really important. But also access to a safe place to get to know their natural waterway. Whether it’s via trail that can lead them past green infrastructure projects and green spaces. And eventually they arrive at their local creek where they see ducks and hear insects and get to experience the natural wonder and peace that natural areas bring. Or if it means that their school has a natural space playground where they can do learning and just be able to engage with the land use that also is connected to healthy water. Yeah, and that it’s not dependent on where they live or their economic social situation, but that can be an equitable experience.
Hannah Mico: Thanks, Andrea.
Matt Hubers: For me, a just future really involves making sure everyone has a voice. I think one thing I really love about the work we do is that we involve people at a grassroots level. It’s more than just advocating for clean space for appropriate practices, but it’s actually giving people the tools to be able to act upon their space in a good way, in a way that’s constructive, in a way that’s respectful to our environment, to others who live around here, not just other people, but plants, animals, and even our water. And I think the more we kind of get into that, understand that, the more justice we can have.
Hannah Mico: Thanks, Matt. And Haley?
Haley Kornoelje: This question has spawned a lot of thoughts, which as it should, but I think when I try to boil it down to the base level, the just water future that I’d like to see for our community is one where relationships are centered and where love and respect is our primary way of being and way of acting toward other people and toward other creatures and toward the land and the water. Because we’ve seen that when relationships are centered and belonging is found and there’s connection and meaning between people and their place, water is protected and diversity is celebrated. And those good, beautiful, just outcomes that we want to see naturally flow from that when that’s how we treat people.
About
Andrea Lubberts (she/her) has spent the last 15 years learning, loving, and hoping for Plaster Creek. As Program Manager, she now supports the mission of Plaster Creek Stewards to reconcile relationships throughout the watershed between people and the natural environment. She does this by collaborating with PCS staff, community members, and partner organizations, and she loves seeing new connections bloom. A perfect day at work for Andrea is spent outdoors with others—preferably planting a garden or visiting the creek—though she also values the work that happens indoors to ensure those outdoor days are possible. Andrea’s background is in Communications, Outdoor Recreation, and everything her curiosity has led her to explore along the way.
Haley Kornoelje (she/her) has served as the Project Coordinator for Plaster Creek Stewards since 2022. In this role, she helps plan, implement, and maintain Plaster Creek Stewards’ ecological restoration projects. Her favorite parts of this work include building relationships with watershed neighbors, spending time outside, and encouraging a love of plants, water, and the outdoors in other people. Her educational background is in environmental science, and she has always called Grand Rapids, Michigan home.
Matt Hubers is the Education and Outreach Coordinator for Plaster Creek Stewards. With a background in nonprofit communications and education, Matt’s primary role is to share the work of Plaster Creek Stewards with neighboring communities. He assists local schools and educators in implementing place-based learning, guest teaches in classrooms, and helps educators implement green projects with their students. He also oversees communications and education with different neighborhoods, places of worship, organizations, and other groups in the Plaster Creek Watershed. Matt loves working with kids and seeing them get excited to engage with their local watershed.
