2025 Making Waves Awards

Four exceptional people and three organizations were presented with the Sun Foundation’s Making Waves Award at the 32nd Clean Water Celebration held at the Peoria Civic Center Monday, April 28, 2025.

Making Waves Awards acknowledge those who have gone above and beyond to protect and preserve clean water and the environment. Nominations cover a wide variety of projects and are taken in the categories of Student, Teacher, School, Individual, Business, Government and Organization.

Recipients for 2025 are:

Mary Keltner-King & Megan Nugen

Mary Keltner-King and Megan Nugen, both Peoria School District 150 educators at Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center, have created a citizen science project focused on the Monarch Butterfly.

Begun some six years ago, students ranging in ages 3-5 years and their families learn about our environment and how they can improve it through a study of monarch butterflies. They discover the life cycle of these butterflies and that of their only food source, milkweed while collecting long-term data on larval monarch populations and milkweed habitat. Monarch caterpillars are raised in the classroom and released.

Beginning in 2023, with a grant from the Peoria Public Schools Community Foundation, a Monarch Festival is held in the fall with learning stations for families to engage in Monarch and Milkweed activities. The event culminates in a monarch release.

Rick Pantages

2025 will be Rick’s 3rd year managing the Charter Oak Community Garden. The purpose of this garden is to involve the students at Charter Oak Primary School in the vegetable growing process as well as donate the food back to the Charter Oak families. Any additional produce was donated to local food pantries through the Grow a Row initiative.

Rick produced around 150 lbs of from this garden the first year to over 400lbs the 2nd year. Charter Oak Primary School’s principal (Kathy Rodriguez) and the Parent Teacher Club (PTC) have been very supportive of Rick engaging with the students in the planting and harvesting of the produce as well as funding to expand the garden.

Rick has been instrumental with his community involvement and partnerships. He has received grants and donations from the community that helped with seeds, plants, and infrastructure to expand the garden beds. Through his partnership with the Friends of Rocky Glen, they were able to fill a garden bed with a variety of native plants. Jimax has provided mulch throughout the season. Rick has also volunteered additional time to other Peoria Public School gardens. He is a wealth of information and dedicated to the students and the support of gardens in the schools. We are so lucky to have Rick’s continued involvement and look forward to the 2025 growing season under Rick’s vision.

Jo Fessett

Jo Fessett is the Executive Director of the Illinois Audubon Society, the oldest conservation organization in the state of Illinois. Since 1897, Illinois Audubon Society has been a major force in conservation, education and land protection. Just in the past few years Ms. Fessett has played a role in protecting more than 1300 acres of land all across the state, from the watershed of a cave in Southwestern Illinois, to one of the largest urban wildlife preserves in Northeastern Illinois. She has helped to raise funds for the stewardship of that land and helped to train and recruit volunteers for land stewardship. (If you want to volunteer at a sanctuary near you, please contact the Illinois Audubon Society.)

She is on the Board of Directors for Illinois Environmental Council, Prairie State Conservation Coalition and Illinois Raptor Center, and a consultant with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission. Prior to joining Audubon, she worked for The Nature Conservancy, where she played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Emiquon Nature Preserve, not only one of the largest wetland restoration projects in the Illinois River Valley, but one of the largest wetland restorations in the world! She worked behind the scenes to secure support, arrange for the acquisition and then to launch a core of explorers, artists and scientists, who documented the transition back from corn fields and feedlots to an oasis for wildlife. She has worked with The Sun Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and the Wetlands Initiative to create the game, Find the Birds as part of the Clean Water Celebration’s programming during the pandemic, a game that is still available on your smartphone, tablet or computer. 

The Illinois RiverWatch program trains volunteers to collect and identify macroinvertebrates, which are small animals without a backbone. Macroinvertebrates are excellent indicators of water quality because they vary in their sensitivity to pollution in the water, so which species are present and how abundant they are tells us a lot about the condition of the water they live in.

The Illinois RiverWatch program was established by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources in 1995 with the goals of providing consistent, high-quality data for use by scientists, to educate and inform community members about the ecology and importance of freshwater resources in Illinois and to provide an opportunity for anyone to become involved in the stewardship of Illinois’ freshwater. After budget cuts in 2004 left the program without support, National Great Rivers became the steward and funder of the program in 2006, which continues today.

Peoria Riverkeeper is a newly developed organization with a great mission and mindset to clean up our waterways and bring awareness and change to the central IL community.  Check out their mission and passions on their website: https://www.peoriariverkeeper.org

Friends of the Fox River is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization made up of citizens and organizations taking action to protect and maintain the quality of the Fox River and its tributaries. Through its programs and activities, they encourage both adults and students to become involved in protecting the river and its watershed. Each year, they have over 5,000 citizens participating in programs including our water quality monitoring program (Fox River Watershed Monitoring Network), river and stream cleanups, river habitat improvement projects, and water quality education events.