During the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020, our country (and local communities) experienced closures and restrictions like never before. Offices closed and in-person programming ceased. In an effort to increase extension visibility in the community of Clark County and offer educational outreach during the “Healthy at Home” request of Kentuckians; the Clark County Family and Consumer Sciences Agent along with the 4-H Youth Development Agent teamed up to offer grab-and-go style brown bags activities, projects, and educational information. These bags had everything needed to do an activity that reinforced the educational topic of the bag. This allowed anyone in Clark County to drive up to the Extension office, pick up a brown bag, and not have to interact face-to-face with anyone while still having access to Extension programming.

The first of these brown bag projects was a garden bag that included seeds, pots, soil, recipes and information on how to plant. A post was put on social media indicating the bags would be available and it reached over 6000 people. Thirty bags were set out on a Monday morning at 8 am and gone merely 25 minutes later. The response was so great an additional 30 bags were created and set out later that week, allowing at least 60 families to have the things needed to start a garden. A survey was handed out with these bags and 100% of the respondents reported that they learned something new about gardening and growing their own produce.

Based on the success of the first bags, additional bags were created in the same fashion, including stress management kits, financial literacy fun, physical activity bags, dish gardens, bird feeder kits, cloth face covering kits, and environmental science bags. In total, there have been over 1000 educational bags given to the community from April through June of 2020. During this time, the Clark County Cooperative Extension Facebook page increased its amount of followers by over 20% and participants have provided feedback and praise for the brown bag projects. Participants have posted pictures and comments such as, “We loved this kit! The stressball balloons were so much fun to make!” and “[our plants] were getting pretty tall so we moved them to planter boxes today, but wanted to say thanks again for doing this! The kids have loved it.”