From 22 to 25 May 2025, the OTTERS project gathered participants in a Spring School for Educators and the “Waves of Change” conference in Oeiras, Portugal. These two events were held as part of the Oeiras Science Festival to celebrate the project’s three successful years. Across four days of rich programming, more than 140 attendees—including citizen-science practitioners, policy makers, teachers, researchers, and students—gathered to celebrate recent advances, share lessons learned, and chart a path forward for water-focused citizen science.
The event opened with plenary talks by David Sousa, Director-General of Education at the General Directorate of Education of Portugal, and Elisabete Brigadeiro, Head of the Science and Innovation Office at the Oeiras Valley – City Council of Oeiras. Both emphasised the vital role of community-generated data in shaping resilient water management strategies at local, national, and European scales.
The event also served as a stage for the OTTERS partners to present the work done in the project and disseminate the results. Researchers and practitioners followed with presentations on innovative methods for data collection, quality assurance, and integration of citizen-science outputs into local and regional policies.
Teachers and students took the center stage in dedicated sessions, sharing hands-on classroom and extracurricular activities they have undertaken. Posters highlighted numerous ongoing citizen science projects, shared resources, innovative ideas, and highlighted their real-world impact on environmental literacy and stewardship behaviours.
Besides the OTTERS Conference participants, on May 23, the festival welcomed upper-secondary students (10th to 12th grade) from schools across the Municipality of Oeiras. These students attended oral presentations and explored the stands and exhibitions. On May 24, the festival opened its doors to the general public, inviting people of all ages to explore the presentations and workshops, and engage with the innovative projects and initiatives showcased at the OTTERS Conference.
Dr. Garabet Kazanjian, coordinator of the OTTERS project and assistant professor at the American University of Armenia, underscored the program’s dual mission: to improve the rigour and usability of citizen-collected water data, and to foster a sense of responsibility and connection to aquatic ecosystems among participants. “Our goal is twofold,” he remarked. “We want to ensure that every water sample, every observation, and every data point stands up to scientific scrutiny—and we want every volunteer, student, and educator to feel empowered as a steward of their local water resources.”
On the final day of the Spring School, participating teachers presented, in groups, the outcomes of the previous co-design sessions. Each group outlined actionable plans to address their own community’s water-related challenges, raise awareness and active participation in environmental conservation, integrate citizen science into their teaching curricula, and engage municipal authorities, NGOs, and other stakeholders.
Priscila Doran, the organising partner from NUCLIO, remarked: “It was a rich and fruitful event where educators, researchers, and citizen scientists collaborated and designed new pathways to work collaboratively in citizen science to protect their water ecosystems. In the end, we were all proud of the outcome!”
By bringing together a diverse coalition of stakeholders, the OTTERS Spring School and Final Conference showcased the power of collaboration in citizen science. With a robust toolkit and methodologies available on the OTTERS Resource Hub, clear pathways for policy integration detailed in three white papers and a policy brief, and an energised community of educators and volunteers, the project has created the momentum to drive the next wave of change toward sustainable water stewardship.
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The OTTERS project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Coordination and Support Actions programme under Grant agreement No 101094041. The information and views of this article lie entirely with the authors. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
