The Seed to Supper program is a partnership between Oregon State University Extension and the Oregon Food Bank. The program increases food security of low-income residents by providing education and support, empowering participants to grow their own vegetables.
The program consists of six two-hour sessions for adults and covers the basics of vegetable gardening. Topics include planning a garden, managing soil, growing season maintenance and harvesting. The program is provided at no cost and relies on support from the Oregon Food Bank, OSU Extension, volunteers and private donations. OSU Extension in Linn and Benton counties is seeing great results in our communities from this program. We’re reaching traditionally underserved audiences and it’s also been a useful recruiting tool for our Master Gardener volunteer program.
I was so lucky to have a chance to superpower this program and develop my communication skills through the i-Three Issues Corps experience. The major goal I set for my project was to develop skills to report the impacts of the Seed to Supper program in an engaging way to the general public. My initial thoughts were to develop a suite of promotional materials (infographics, videos, etc.) to use on social media.
Along with meeting amazing Extension professionals at the i-Three Issues Corps conference, I was introduced to ESRI’s Story Map application. What a stunning way to present Extension’s impact! I switched gears a little to make creating a Story Map the cornerstone of my i-Three Issues Corps project. Click the screenshot below a view my work in progress (comments & suggestions are welcome!):
ESRI offers quite a few different layouts and I’m using the Story Map Journal design. It’s described as a sequential, place-based narrative story map and was a good fit for this particular story. Story Maps is a very flexible tool and I’m excited to use it to showcase our regional Master Gardener projects in the future!
Up next is completing the suite of impact reporting tools by developing a few infographics!
Have any suggestions for programs to create eye-catching infographics? Want to share some examples? Please comment or share a link below!