I have been reading stories by the boatload about Lake Mead and the Colorado River drying up, and reading them,  it is hard to feel anything but despair. The thing is – there is another story, a story of patient and collaborative work to help restore the river often called the “Nile of North America”, which could become a model for trans-national river restoration efforts throughout the world.

Raise the River, a unique partnership of six U.S. and Mexican NGOs committed to restoring the Colorado River Delta that has worked with policymakers, water agencies and governmental representatives from the U.S. and Mexico since 2012 to cooperatively create historic change for the Colorado River Delta, puts it in a nutshell: