Happy Creek Week! We think it should be called Creek Month with how many opportunities there are this September. There is truly something for everyone.

Wednesdays, ongoing (next: Sept. 23) - Ice Plant Removal Volunteering, Doran Beach 9:30am - More info

Thursdays, ongoing (next: Sep. 24) - Friends of Fife Creek Volunteer Day, 2 p.m. - More info

Sept. 19 - The 40th Annual Russian River Watershed Clean-up - Join Russian Riverkeeper in the biggest cleanup event of the year! Find a location near you.

Sept. 19 - Ukiah Valley Russian River Cleanup - More info

Saturdays & Sundays, ongoing (next: Sept. 19 & 20) - Free Guided walks through Armstrong Redwoods / Guerneville, 10 a.m. - More info

Sept. 20 - Trash cleanup at Gravenstein Way, Cotati Friends of the Laguna, 9:30am - More info

Sept. 20 - Habitat restoration volunteering at Pocket Park, Cotati Friends of the Laguna, 9:30am - More info

Last Saturday of every month (next: Sept. 26) - Land Stewardship Saturdays with the Wildlife Conservancy / Jenner, 9:30 a.m. - More info

Sept. 26 - Seed Farm Volunteer Day, Laguna de Santa Rosa, 10am - More info

Sept. 30 - Rick Steves: How to See the World / Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, 7:30 p.m. - More info

Oct. 3 - Russian Riverkeeper’s Ripp’n River Bash 2026 / Healdsburg, 5 p.m. - More info

Creek Week is Here, and it’s Turning 40

Forty cleanups. Four decades of volunteers, trash bags, and Saturday mornings given up for a river that can't say thank you but keeps giving back anyway. This year's Russian River Watershed Clean-up, the 40th, lands on September 19 and opens Creek Week, a run of cleanups, tours, and volunteer days across Sonoma and Mendocino counties through September 25.

The cleanup started as a handful of people who cared, and it grew into the single largest volunteer event our watershed sees all year, and kudos to the Russian Riverkeeper team for keeping it going all these years. This year's locations span the length of the watershed, from headwaters in Mendocino County down through Sonoma to the sea at Jenner. Wherever you live in the watershed, there's a stretch of creek or riverbank near you that could use a hand, especially after this year's recreation season. Find a location near you and be part of what forty years of showing up has built.

The Russian River Confluence is an official Russian River Watershed Association Creek Week Partner, here to help spread the news. This week is a full week of the kind of work that usually happens quietly, week after week, without much fanfare. Volunteers pulling invasive ice plant off Doran Beach. Neighbors giving up a Thursday afternoon for Fife Creek. Guided walks through the towering redwoods. Habitat restoration at Cotati's Pocket Park. Seed collection at the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Watershed health is built in these small, repeated acts of care, done by people who aren't asking for credit. RRWA has put together an interactive map of where you can get involved, watershed-wide.

That's the spirit the Confluence exists to support: independent groups and agencies across two counties, each doing their own piece of this work, adding up to something bigger than any one of us could do alone. Creek Week is that collaboration made visible for one week a year. The rest of the time, it's just what this watershed's people do.

However you can show up this week, at the cleanup, at a volunteer day, or simply by walking a trail and noticing the water, thank you.

Forty years in, the river is still counting on us.

What’s an Impact Network Anyway?

About a decade ago, at a gathering along the Russian River, someone told a room full of more than a hundred organizations that the watershed needed an identity and connective tissue. Nobody wrote a strategic plan that day, and no one put one organization in charge. But people agreed on that one thing.

This idea explains the Confluence better than any mission statement could. The problems in this watershed (and there are several) won’t be solved by putting one group in charge of them. They’ll be solved by different people and organizations finding each other, building trust, figuring out things together that none of them would have landed on alone, and leaning on each other’s strengths to solve complex problems and adapt to ever evolving challenges.

This concept of a group finding solutions to complex issues is known as emergence, which is a natural part of the problem solving process. It feels like magic when it happens. These aren’t predetermined solutions that a single organization discovered and want to extend to the group, but rather a unique and novel set of solutions and strategies for addressing complex interactions.

“In other words, collective impact is not merely a new process that supports the same social sector solutions but an entirely different model of social progress. The power of collective impact lies in the heightened vigilance that comes from multiple organizations looking for resources and innovations through the same lens, the rapid learning that comes from continuous feedback loops, and the immediacy of action that comes from a unified and simultaneous response among all participants.” - Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Confluence is a grassroots impact network. An impact network functions differently than the usual model, where one organization sets the strategy and everyone else follows. In a network, no single group has authority over the rest. What holds it together is trust and a clear, shared sense of purpose.

Networks tend to grow in stages, and it helps to see them side by side.

A watershed full of good organizations that rarely talk to each other looks scattered. Luckily, ours isn't that anymore, though it is still operating in silos. Right now, a lot of organizations, agencies, Tribal nations, and community members are connected less to each other directly and more through the work of staying in relationship with all of them at once. The Confluence serves as a hub (and is certainly not the only one).

Being at the center of a network doesn't mean running it. Every organization connected through this work keeps its own mission and makes its own decisions. Our job is different. We notice where two or more groups are already working on the same problem without knowing it. We carry trust from one relationship into the next. We identify funding for holistic projects. We help the watershed start to see itself as one system spanning both Sonoma and Mendocino County instead of dozens of separate efforts.

We're also not trying to stay a hub forever. The goal is to grow toward a watershed where organizations are connected directly to each other, in emerging and evolving hubs, and not just through us. That way the network holds up even if any one piece steps back. That's the work ahead of us over the next several years, and what we are currently funded to accomplish.

When people with different views on the same problem sit down together in good faith, they often discover something nobody walked in with. That happens reliably once a group has spent time building trust, actually getting to know each other, and being together before trying to act together.

We've watched it happen this year. Organizations that had never formally compared notes sat down and found real overlap in their work, without anyone telling them to look for it. A joint idea for public events came out of a conversation nobody had scheduled to produce one. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, we were able to act quickly and in lock-step.

We aren’t hoping to have power or trying to become the organization that tells anyone else what to do. We're trying to be the place where the watershed's caretakers can find each other, build trust, and let good ideas come from wherever they happen to come from. That's admittedly slower than a top-down plan, but it's also more likely to hold up over the next thirty years by the people who believe in it. We are increasingly seeing complex, intersectional problems, many of which are being influenced by climate change. If there is any a time to stick together, through difference, it’s now.

Russian River Stewardship Calendar: Get Involved!

Keep up with our stewardship calendar! This month, our focus is: Get Involved.

We tend to wait for the right moment to join a good cause. We tell ourselves we're too busy, or that next year will be easier. That moment doesn't come on its own.

This month, sign up for a Creek Week volunteer event. Block off a few hours that morning and don't put it off. Bring your family, bring your friends, and spend the morning giving back.

Respecting the Russian River is part of everyday life in the watershed. These monthly stewardship tips point to simple, practical ways to care for the river and the places we all share.

Questions or Comments? Reach out to info@russianriverconfluence.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @RussianRiverConfluence!