Educate, raise awareness and engage society on the importance ofAchieving an optimal ecological status of Spanish rivers and calling for their recovery is the main objective of theWorld Water Monitoring Challenge.

Educating, raising awareness and involving society about the importance of achieving an optimal ecological status of Spanish rivers and calling for their recovery is the main objective of the World Water Monitoring Challenge programme.

This international initiative is coordinated at the national level by the Association for the Defense of Water Quality (Adecagua), which has been carrying out this activity on a regular basis in the last 10 years and has the support of the Biodiversity Foundation to continue in 2016 with this campaign.

Some of the different actions that were framed within the project included:

• Project Coordination
• Creation and management of sampling equipment
• Different education and outreach with schoolchildren
• Different actions for processing the results obtained

Once the 2016 campaign was over, a total of 2,500 participants have been counted throughout the months that the project has lasted. Also during this period of time, the Adecagua entity has delivered 75 sampling kits to those interested in participating in the project, volunteers who have been distributed throughout almost all the hydrographic confederations. In addition, spare material has also been provided to volunteers from previous years. Finally, other activities that were carried out were eight field trips with schoolchildren and a field trip with participants with disabilities.