Water Rangers, AquaHacking’15, celebrates its 5-year anniversary!

Water Rangers, our 1st ever AquaHacking winners!

The first-ever AquaHacking Challenge took place in 2015 and focused on issues affecting the Ottawa River. The winning team of that Challenge was led by Kat Kavanagh alongside co-founders Mark Dabrowski and Ollie Kavanagh. From that Challenge experience, the team went on to establish Water Rangers. Water Rangers is a non-profit organization that creates tools for citizen scientists to measure and report water quality parameters. These tools include water testing toolkits and a user-friendly, open-access database to upload data and information.

Since 2015, Kat continues to be actively involved with us as an AquaHacking Alumni Ambassador. On multiple occasions, she has been a guest speaker at AquaHacking Challenge Final events. She is always open to sharing her insights and advice with current Challenge participants. Her passion and energy for what she does is inspiring to us all!

A virtual party to celebrate their 5-year anniversary

On August 5, 2020, the team celebrated its 5-year anniversary as a non-profit organization! Usually, the team likes to plan an in-person gathering to mark this anniversary event each year. Given the physical socialization limitations with COVID-19, they opted for an online party. The AquaHacking Alumni Program was pleased to co-host this event alongside Water Rangers to mark this huge milestone.

Members from the Water Rangers and AquaHacking Alumni community joined for the online Zoom party. Kat shared some remarks and stories about the past 5 years and highlighted all they’ve achieved along the way.

Then, we presented a surprise video where people from the Water Rangers network shared their good wishes and congratulatory messages! After that, participants played a fun round of trivia to test their water-testing knowledge.

A virtual event can never replace the fun and joy of an in-person gathering to celebrate this kind of milestone. Although, it was still very special for everyone to gather to say congrats and have some fun. Great job, Water Rangers! We can’t wait to see what you will achieve next.

Learn more about the startup here & save the dates for the AquaHacking Atlantic Challenge next September 18th and for the Winnipeg Challenge October 20th.