Author: ChaNae Bradley

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Pilot program encourages women farmers

The Impact Collaborative helped us to focus. We had all these threads of ideas flowing in different directions. The Impact Collaborative helped us develop a concept map that had an action between each idea that we had.

Women farmers pilot projectA Pennsylvania woman’s empowering experience during a pilot training encouraged her to accept a manager’s position in a male-dominated industry.

Helen Kollar-McArthur, who accepted her new position in November 2017, is one of 12 participants of the pilot program called, “Women Farmer’s Leadership and Empowerment Training,” the brainchild of Impact Collaborative participants Patty Neiner and Beth Holtzman.

“I would give a lot of credit to the training. It helped give me the confidence to accept this manager’s job,” said Kollar-McArthur, operational manager of Rising Springs Meat Company, a slaughterhouse in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania.

The 32-year-old butcher said she had an enlightening experience and learned from others just like her.

“I wasn’t alone in my struggles of trying to navigate a career in agriculture and the kind of challenges that are unique to women. It lets me know I’m not crazy. I came away with tangible action steps to try and move forward,” Kollar- McArthur said.

Some of those challenges include dealing with condescension from men, balancing the farm and family commitments, in addition to connecting with other women farmers.

The pilot program created with input from more than 15 Extension professionals from across the country, drew participation from women vegetable farmers, women livestock and dairy farmers, along with women working for agricultural nonprofits. The women participants, mostly from central Pennsylvania, ages ranged between 20-60 years old.

Patty Neiner, Pennsylvania State University Extension program associate, and manager of the Women Farmer’s Leadership and Empowerment Training said the main push for this program was to reach women who didn’t have access to training. She also said this training was created to help women pursue leadership roles in agriculture.

“There’s a lack of women farmers in leadership roles, like milk marketing boards, or different associations boards and committees. Women with smaller farms are not getting their voices heard. We would like to see more women serving so that their needs are getting a voice as well.”

Neiner acknowledges that the pilot program came together after she attended the Impact Collaborative (IC) Designathon event in Detroit.

The event, now referred to as Designathon Two, introduces four steps, which are design thinking, key informant expertise, growing base of evidence-based practice and dynamic synergy. Each step comes with objectives that serve to change the way the teams work. After completing the process, the teams leave with a new plan allowing them to work more effectively.

“The Impact Collaborative helped us to focus. We had all these threads of ideas flowing in different directions. The Impact Collaborative helped us develop a concept map that had an action between each idea that we had,” Neiner said.

The pilot program, inspired by the IC training, evolved into a one-day training session that allowed participants to watch pre-filmed videos of women farmers facing dilemmas. Pilot program attendees listened to each video, had a discussion among them, and then provided a solution for the dilemma. At the end of the discussion, they would watch the remaining video and see how the farmer handled the dilemma. As a group, they compared and contrasted each other’s solutions. During that process, pilot program participants built relationships and problem solved.

 “One of the cool things that came out of this was the ideas we generated,” Kollar-McArthur said. “Simple things like how to navigate your first agricultural auction, knowing how oddly intimidating that can be,” she said. “Some people ended up pairing up the next day, saying, ‘I’ll go with you,’” Kollar-McArthur said.

Beth Holtzman, coordinator of technical assistance programs for the University of Vermont, and one of the creators of the pilot said this training and its delivery is unique and important for the success of women farmers.

“There are excellent leadership programs for women and excellent leadership programs for farmers but many of these programs are oriented to grooming women to run for office, or for promotions within agribusiness corporations, or to be an advocate for a particular agricultural industry. We wanted to make sure that our program spanned the leadership challenges women encounter – at the family level, at the farm business level, and within the agricultural community,” Holtzman said.

In the future, Holtzman and Neiner would like the pilot to develop a curriculum with modules accompanied with videos. They would like to see it delivered in an online format.

“I would love to see us taking it online or developed into a hybrid curriculum that could be available several times a year, having multiple cohorts go through the curriculum and establish supportive networks and relationships with women across the country. I want to enable people who have constraints on travel to be able to access it. I would also like to see people who don’t have role models in their community access some online and find those role models and mentors so they can achieve their goals,” Holtzman said.

For more information about the pilot program, contact Neiner at prn103@psu.edu. For more information about the Impact Collaborative, visit https://www.extension.org/impact-collaborative.

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Impact Collaborative Process Helps Extension Professionals Create Online Civil Rights Training

What I think helped with the process was having people tell their own personal stories. It made the difference. People resonate more with personal stories versus, “this is the law.”

While presenting at the first eXtension Issue Corps (now called the Impact Collaborative) Designathon in 2016, Renee Pardello, assistant dean for the University of Minnesota Extension, began to have conversations with Extension professionals from across the country about integrating global dynamics and cultural knowledge into Extension education, research, and outreach.

“What I discovered is there is a wide range of people’s knowledge regarding the interplay of global realities and understanding the variety of cultures representing work clients, partners, and colleagues,” Pardello said.  “Some people said they’d never even thought about it,” regarding topics such as civil rights and why Extension complies with civil rights laws and the value it brings to Extension.

After finishing her Impact Collaborative experience, Pardello began developing a civil rights training designed to be effective for Minnesota faculty and Extension faculty across the country. Pardello received assistance creating the training with more than 40 Extension faculty, educators, and staff from the University of Minnesota. She also used resources from other land-grant universities to include Washington State University, Ohio State University, and Pennsylvania State University.

Pardello credits the Impact Collaborative process for reinforcing the need. “What I think helped with the process was having people tell their own personal stories. It made the difference. People resonate more with personal stories versus, ‘this is the law,’” Pardello said.

The training, which is currently offered through eXtension, is a robust online training with five modules consisting of videos, activities, and resources that provide a thorough review of civil rights laws and resources. Real-life scenarios and group discussions are included to educate, enlighten and inform Extension professionals about equity, diversity and civil rights. The goal is to address equity, diversity, and inclusion and to surpass civil rights expectations.

As a result of the work and expertise used to develop the civil rights training, Pardello was asked to return in 2017 and serve as a key informant for the 2017 Impact Collaborative.

The original Designathon was a day and a half process that includes four steps, which are design thinking, key informant expertise, growing base of evidence-based practice and dynamic synergy. Each step comes with objectives that serve to change the way the teams work. After completing the process, the teams leave with a new plan allowing them to work more effectively.

As a key informant, Pardello spoke to each group about their projects. She also helped the groups develop strategies to effectively reach new audiences and to be inclusive in regards to language. When creating a strategy map, Pardello began to understand the barriers that challenged many of the groups.

“The barrier was giving people language so they could be successful in initiating conversations with diverse groups. Hopefully, as these groups move forward, they will feel comfortable going into a community in the U.S. where they don’t fit in,” Pardello said.

Holli Arp, the University of Minnesota program leader for leadership and civic engagement, recently completed her online civil rights training. She said the training provided a common understanding of the laws and expectations of a land-grant institution. She said the intentional efforts of the organization to have everyone complete the training, but also to go beyond what is required by law, helped her analyze the team’s programming delivery.

“It gave you a chance to reflect on your own thinking and your own processes,” Arp said.  “It made me really think, is our programming really accessible to all?”

Recognizing there are communities that are underserved or unserved because of current processes, Arp said in Minnesota they began focusing team conversations about how to expand their reach.

Through the help of a seed grant with South Dakota State University, Arp said they are initiating conversations in the Latino community with the goal of helping the community understand the breadth of what Extension is and the services it provides.  They also would like to create leadership programming that fits the community’s needs.  “We hope to co-create something that can be more meaningful and grow,” Arp said.

In addition to Arp, Michael Darger, Extension community economics specialist at the University of Minnesota, said the training helped him realize the need to be prepared to do something different.

“Changing structure is hard, but I’m optimistic. I recommend the course; I think it was put together intentionally,” Darger said.

Although this effort began in Minnesota, concepts such as global dynamics, cultural knowledge, and civil rights are ideologies that Pardello believes will overall benefit Cooperative Extension programming in the U.S. and abroad.

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This story was written by ChaNae Bradley, Senior Communications Specialist  at Fort Valley State University

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Impact Collaborative Training Helps Extension Personnel Find Missing Links

“Before we were assuming that people would find the information. We weren’t trying to meet our audience directly.”

Three North Carolina State University Extension professors found it critical to educate landowners in their state about the effects of climate change on forest growth.
Collectively, Dr. Susan Moore, a retired NCSU Extension associate professor, along with Dr. Mark Megalos, NCSU forestry and environmental resources Extension professor, and Dr. Robert Bardon, NCSU associate dean of Extension, developed content and provided technical assistance for a website that served as a repository for best management practices about forest resilience to climate change.

To improve this existing effort, Megalos, Moore, and Bardon attended the National Extension and Research Administrative Officers Conference (NERAOC) in San Antonio, Texas where they participated in the eXtension Issues Corp, now rebranded as the Impact Collaborative.
The Impact Collaborative is a proven process used to innovate, accelerate and amplify local impact. During the process, Cooperative Extension professionals from land-grant universities across the country form teams around an idea that aims to create a quantifiable impact in their local programming.

Moore said the process revealed the missing links between what they were doing and how they might better reach their audience. “We had trouble driving people to this Extension resource that we built over a six to 10 year period. We built it and no one came,” Megalos said. From this experience, the group quickly learned that creating a website is one thing, making sure people know about it and use it for its intended purposes was another.

The process includes four steps which are design thinking, key informant expertise, growing base of evidence-based practice and dynamic synergy. Each step comes with objectives that serve to change the way the teams work. After completing the process, the teams leave with a new plan allowing them to work more effectively.

“Before we were assuming that people would find the information. We weren’t trying to meet our audience directly,” Moore said.

The process that helped the trio see their problems is called concept mapping. Concept mapping is a method used to show the connection between relationships. Megalos said by mapping out their process they were able to critique each step and find the weak spots.

“We identified what we needed which was more input into social media. We already had enough material on the eXtension website, we just had to find the hook. What was going to get people to get one more click and view our website,” Megalos said.

concept mapIn addition, key informants, or experts helped the group navigate the process by providing solutions and also by being available to answer questions.

As a result, the team took a different approach and began using social media strategically to link people to their site.

First, they began partnering with groups such as the Southern Region Extension Climate Academy and the Climate Learning Network. By linking to these organizations’ Facebook and Twitter social media accounts, they were able to tap into their niche audience.

“We leveraged each other’s work and that continues to this day,” Megalos said. He mentioned some of it existed before they attended the IMPACT Collaborative, but they became more consistent with their approach.

“Toward the end, we were getting about 1,000 contacts a week just on Facebook. On our Twitter we had reached about 18,000 connections a month,” Megalos said. This allowed the team to be able to share all of their research and best practices with landowners and foresters. They determined they were reaching more landowners and foresters through the use of social media analytics which reveals items such as demographics, link clicks, and growth.

Moore said this was important because it helped to spread the word that valuable information was available to landowners. “If they can access our information, they could better adapt their forest to climate change,” Moore said.

She added that this information is beneficial to landowners who make up a large part of Extension’s client base. “It’s a great concern if you’re a forest owner. Your forest is like a bank account, it’s an investment, it’s one of your assets so you’re going to want to take care of it,” Moore said.

Now that the information is reaching the audience they desire, Moore and Megalos both agreed that the experience was invaluable.

“We learned a lot. It stirred us to think more creatively about our issues and to solve them through teamwork,” Moore said.

Megalos, who continues to use social media in his daily efforts to educate landowners said, he now views social media as a networking platform and marketing tool. “It’s low cost, provides an easy way to collect metrics, and pushes awareness which drove them to our site. We had nothing like that a year ago,” Megalos said.

You can contact Dr. Megalos at mamegalo@ncsu.edu

Written By: ChaNaè Bradley
Senior Communications Specialist
Fort Valley State University College of Agriculture, Family Sciences, and Technology