Because together, we can achieve more.
The Blackstone Collaborative was developed in 2021 to implement the priority goals identified within the Blackstone Needs Assessment Report. We’re here to help partners work together to improve local health and resilience in the face of legacy contamination, ongoing urbanization, and growing climate impacts.
Photo credit: Ayla Fox
Mission
Our mission is to improve the social and ecological health and resilience of our watershed.
Through capacity building and technical assistance, we envision a future where communities are able to meet the challenges of our industrial legacy, urbanization, and growing climate impacts.
The Collaborative acts as an umbrella organization to encompass existing partners including nonprofits, state agencies, tribes, and others that have been working tirelessly for decades to improve the health of our region. However, we also seek to bring in new voices to ensure under-represented voices are present and included.
How we started
The Blackstone Watershed has seen incredible progress over the last half century, but most of the work has been done through permitting requirements or local, opportunistic actions, and the watershed wasn’t keeping pace with its surrounding regions in terms of bringing in grants or project implementation. In 2019, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (NBEP) spent two years gathering stakeholders to find out what local groups were working on, what they needed, and how we could more effectively work together. The answer was that the region was full of smart, passionate, and dedicated volunteers, but most groups had limited staff and financial capacity to do more.
In 2021, NBEP released the Blackstone River Watershed Needs Assessment Report, identifying 20 priority actions to improve watershed health and resilience. The first thing on the list was to establish a watershed collaborative to improve capacity, provide technical assistance, and coordinate diverse partners to work together on priority actions at a watershed scale.
NBEP dedicated funding to hire a coordinator to start the Collaborative, choosing Clark University to act as fiscal host in September 2021 and the Collaborative held its first meeting the next month. After this launch, the Collaborative grew its presence in the region and in 2024, began working as an independent nonprofit.
The Collaborative builds upon decades of dedicated work by volunteers, planners, educators, activists, scientists, water quality monitors, and more that have worked tirelessly throughout the watershed.
What we do
Cross-Sector Coordination
We meet monthly every third Friday, from 10am-12pm.
Regular meetings allow us to collaborate better and stay on top of current events, grants, and most importantly - relationships. Check out our recordings and notes here and learn about our next meeting. Meetings are typically hybrid, but we offer numerous working groups and other events throughout the year to stay in touch - check out our events page to learn more.
Sharing Resources & Filling Gaps
We work with our partners to share the most recent data, publications, tools, and resources to help you do your work. We also identify gaps and create new resources or find funding for new research to help communities improve resilience and health - from understanding our complex hydrology to what new access points we need to create to be equitable for all. Check out our project page to explore some of our key areas we’re working on.
Capacity Building & Technical Assistance
By understanding our partners and communities, we can help identify priorities watershed-wide that we can work together to support from feasibility to implementation and ensure our region isn’t left behind in state and regional planning and funding. We help find funding, assist with grant writing or provide pass through funds, offer technical support around stormwater management or bylaw changes, and more. Whether it’s creating a new access point or replacing a culvert, we want to help make the watershed a better place for everyone and achieve the action items identified within the Blackstone Needs Assessment Report.
Supporting You - Let us know how
We’re here to help our communities and tribes be more healthy and resilient to climate change impacts. We want to encourage future stewards and highlight traditional ecological knowledge as critical to the path forward, and we want to hear from you. Let us know how we can help you so we can better achieve our shared goal - a restored, healthy river system and watershed for us all.
Click here to learn more about what a Collaborative is and how working together is more impactful than working alone.
Who we are
To learn more about our internal team, check out our Contact page.
Our partners make us who we are - see our full list here.
We’re Committed
to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion
The Blackstone Watershed Needs Assessment and the Blackstone Collaborative acknowledge that this watershed has long been the home of indigenous peoples who remain a crucial component of the socioeconomic, historical, and political fabric of the region. We are on the unceded territory of the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmuc, Quinsigamond Band of Nipmuc, Narragansett Indian Tribe, Pokanoket Tribe, Wampanoag Tribe, and others.
This birthplace of the Industrial Revolution also has significant environmental justice concerns for all people through legacy toxins, which is of particular concern for communities historically marginalized through colonialism, redlining, and other practices. We want to make sure environmental decisions include the original and ongoing stewards of the land - our tribal partners - and that Traditional Ecological Knowledge is valued in this space.
Together, we’re committed to ensuring the Collaborative is an inclusive network that promotes equity through all we do and we hope to work with you to improve the watershed for everyone that lives in, works in, and loves our region.
See our group agreement here - it’s a living document that intentionally sets out ground rules for us all to work collaboratively under.