6 pages, Extension professionals are skilled at connecting with community partners and community members to identify needs and address challenges. This paper outlines how Extension professionals quickly responded to address rising rates of food insecurity in a rural Tennessee County during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an extensive network of state, regional, and local partners, Extension professionals and partners planned and implemented mobile food distributions through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farmers to Families program. These Extension-led efforts resulted in sustainable, community-driven initiatives to improve food insecurity. Lessons learned can help Extension professionals respond to emerging needs.
5 pages, While strategies may differ across geographical regions, FACS Extension professionals work to enhance nutrition education and increase food security in their communities. The four dimensions of food security developed by The Food and Agricultural Organization were reconceptualized to understand food security on an individual or at a community level. Using experiences from a summer internship with two urban counties, the EEUESA Model described here was designed to aid FACS Extension professionals in their efforts for nutrition education and to better understand how programming targets food security in their communities
17 pages, Community engagement has significant impacts on SBAE teachers’ perceived opportunities to remain at their schools or in the profession at large. We wanted to better understand how interactions between teachers and their communities invoked challenge or support, particularly in helping us understand how to retain mobile teachers. Specific to this study, our purpose was to understand how individuals in communities interacted with each other’s positions to better identify where support and challenge were perceived. This discourse analysis utilized the metalanguage generated from a series of interviews, based in dialogue, with several actors across a single migratory context. To evaluate the use of positionalities, we aligned previously identified positions of each group against the other. This condensed to three themes articulating how actors’ positionalities interacted: Conflicting Requirements, I Can and I Will, and All My Love and Support for question one, and themes of Support and Challenge to answer question two. These themes culminated in an interactional work cycle recognizing replaceability and we discuss the theoretical implications of this work cycle for SBAE teachers and community influencers alike.
5 pages, It can be argued that public forums are a valuable and essential tool for Cooperative Extension professionals. This article narrates the innovative use of the public forum action steps outlined in Kahl’s (2016) “A Convener’s Guide to Hosting a Public Forum”. The primary objective was to address illegal dumping and littering concerns with the Extension professional's role to engage the community. The resulting “Backyard Composting Project” demonstrated that public forums are valuable in creatively engaging urban audiences. Ultimately the authors illustrate how a community concern can be addressed using innovative programming to reach what Extension considers to be non-traditional urban populations.
4 pages, The effects of active shootings should be a priority to provide needed assistance to 4-H youth and families in coping with their social-emotional well-being. Exposure to such violence can lead to lasting impacts on youth that can affect behavior. Addressing this sensitive topic is crucial in ensuring that Extension professionals are prepared to meet the needs of youth and families. Higher rates of depression, aggression, to name a few, are a result of having witnessed such events as a shooting. Providing training for Extension personnel can aid in reducing the amount of PTSD and other social-emotional trauma.
18 pages, The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge level of farmers on basic computer literacy, social media use, and to explore which social and demographic factors affected their knowledge capacity. The study had a final sample of 176 participants from the northern, southern and central regions of Trinidad and Tobago. A survey instrument comprising of 14 multiple-choice questions with one accurate response was developed to decrease bias of farmers randomly selecting the accurate response. The questions addressed knowledge on basic computer and social media literacy. Analysis was conducted using one-way ANOVA with post-hoc testing. Results indicated that there were significant differences in farmers’ performance in the knowledge test based on characteristics such as age, education, and household use of social media and the internet. Based on the findings, minimal training in computer and social media literacy did not impede the farmers’ use of the computer or social media. These discoveries highlight the potential of extension programs using the internet and social media applications to improve communication efficiency among agricultural stakeholders within farming communities.
