Picture Tour of WOW by Terry Manier (click here then click on title "Water").

What is WOW?
The concept of the Web of Water or “WOW” expedition is to promote environmental education to students throughout the state.The idea is to kayak from the mountains around Greenville to the Charleston Harbor while the students follow the expedition on a map from their classrooms and learn about the ecosystems and history along the way. We will have several environmental education events at local parks and schools along the waterway. We are now developing the idea even further to include a website and blog posting while we interview watershed, nature, and history experts along the way. The event will be filmed to create a DVD documentary that can be used as teaching tool for educators, bring support to parks and wildlife refuges, and be an ongoing commercial for sponsors.
Our intention is to educate and connect audiences to the watershed and understand the connection it has on their lives and the lives of all living things. We will expose environmental issues and bring about possible solutions to help preserve the web of life, heritage, and culture. We hope students will gain a better appreciation and feel more connected to the others that share the same water. As with all our programs, the curriculum around the expedition will be designed to improve participating students test scores on standardized tests.

Why WOW?

With Project WOW, we will be addressing the educational needs of students in South Carolina. South Carolina students as we all already know have fallen below the national average in two specific areas. One area is science while the other area is social studies. We at LEEP have found a way to meet those needs and to assist by helping students increase their test scores.

This program is Project WOW (Web of Water) an interactive documentary film, bringing an exploration of SC Rivers into classrooms. By teaching and explaining how these waterways affect the students in their lives we hope to have them gain a better knowledge and understanding of science and history. We also plan to educate and connect the students to the environment, the culture and the history that surrounds them.

We will also expose environmental issues such as our watersheds. These watersheds are of great importance to all living things within the country. This documentary will help others learn about the area and increase our tourism. It is a magnificent learning tool that will inspire the students to understand and respect the importance of the watersheds and the environment. We will be documenting the issues that surround the health of the watershed system and give others a chance to take the necessary steps to insure its survival through conservation.
Another issue we will be discussing is alternative energy. LEEP has already taken the first step to teaching students by providing transportation to and from field studies in our own LEEP Bio-Bus. Our bus runs on bio-diesel fuel. We are showing the students a solution to one problem. We will also be discussing unplanned and planned development.

History will be focused by providing local historians along the expedition to explain the history of the area they live. Students will be answering questions that will be posted on our website on a daily basis. Future hopes are to incorporate other SC school districts into the WOW Project.
Over two years now we have been working on this idea of a kayak expedition that would help teach students about the watershed and how it connects all living things. We also want students to learn about the connections in history and culture through out the state and the world through the water ways.
Project WOW is a documentary that we will be filming as we kayak down parts of the Heritage Corridor in South Carolina from Greenville to Charleston. This documentary will not only benefit students by increasing their knowledge of science and history, but it will also benefit our community. The WOW documentary will be placed on a DVD and can be sold and distributed to other schools, businesses and tourist agencies. This will increase not only education of our students but will also be a wonderful way for businesses in and around our community to promote their products. We will offer this to various businesses such as outdoor sports businesses, health food stores and restaurants to promote their products. The documentary will also assist by promoting these businesses that have sponsored the project by providing exposure through the media. The DVD can also be used to promote our Parks and increase public awareness of outdoor activities. This will be a benefit for public health by getting people out and involved in new ways to become more active which leads to healthier life styles.
Throughout the documentary we will also be discussing environmental issues such as replacing petroleum with clean burning biomass such as vegetable oil. We will be explaining alternative fuel and how it can and will be a benefit to our environment as well as our economy. LEEP has been able to educate students by providing transportation that uses vegetable oil derived bio-diesel. By promoting bio-diesel in this manner we are able to show the general public a new way to help save our environment.
I have already completed a trial run of Project WOW this past March. Prior my leaving I was in contact with Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, SC. Mayor Riley was very interested in this trip. He offered positive support toward the expedition.

The expedition consisted of me and a professional photographer Terry Manier. We kayaked from Greenwood to Charleston. Along the way we were fortunate enough to have support in various cities. In Columbia we stopped and met with 100 third graders at Nursery Road Elementary School. We were able to brighten their day by showing off our kayaks and some items we found along the way. We also met up with the Park Rangers at Saluda Shoals Park in Columbia. Here we were able to make new contacts for our trip next year.

We also had a planned stop in Berkeley County for the Nature Scope event. Here we were able to work with over 3000 students from the area. I also had great media coverage from Jamie McGee from the Post and Courier in Charleston. Jamie actually joined us on a short leg of the expedition so she could get a first hand experience.

Now that we are back we have been asked by Charleston City Paper to do a cover story on Project WOW. These are just a small example of the interest in this project that I am proposing.
LEEP will be marketing the WOW Project to corporations to help fund the documentary. We will also be targeting individuals who feel that the environment is an important part of their life. We will also be marketing this to the travel and tourism industry to provide new tourism to our state.
Our biggest targets will be the schools in South Carolina. We are going to provide educators with a simple and fun way to teach their students science and history. The students will have the opportunity to follow along with our expedition by logging on to LEEP’s website and interact by reading our daily logs and answering questions. All teachers want to see their students succeed and they most definitely want to see their students raise their scores on the PACT Tests offered yearly. By marketing schools we are offering not only the educators a product that will assist in teaching but will be providing students with much needed knowledge about their own cultures and their environment.
We feel that WOW has the potential to become the authority on several water conservation issues in South Carolina, and we are inviting all individuals, organizations and companies that have any interest in this documentary to be a direct part of it as a sponsored partner of Project WOW.