The Covid 19 Pandemic created a lot of uncertainty and lack of routine for people, particularly for children in limited-resource communities who rely on schools and community programs to provide educational opportunities and social support. Educators needed to quickly shift to home-based learning opportunities and to find ways to engage youth.

The Youth Leadership Development group, a program through the Brighton Center, switched from in-person summer programming to home-delivered educational kits. They also offered in-person programming for a limited number of participants while practicing social distancing. They partnered with several community partners to provide eight weeks of programs that offered multiple activities.

Members of four different Campbell County Extension Service program areas, including horticulture, 4-H, agriculture and the nutrition education program, which is part of food and consumer sciences, collaborated to provide a variety programs. Participants had the option to sign-up in advance for various themed weeks.

The nutrition education assistant worked with the horticulture agent to provide educational materials such as healthy recipes, Victory Garden instructions, a garden planning calendar, plants, seeds, soil and a container.  The kits were delivered to fifteen homes throughout the county. Through a private Facebook group, a demonstration video was shared so that the families could follow along while planting. This format provided a safe experience where questions and photos could be shared. At the end of the week the kids were asked to make and share a video on the Facebook group talking about their favorite fruit or vegetable.

Several weeks later cooking was the theme.  Twelve of the fifteen youth who signed up had also participated in the gardening activity. They used the herbs they had planted to make a dipping oil to enjoy with the no-knead bread recipe that they baked. An instructional video was created by the Nutrition Assistant with two teen volunteers for the weekly session. Again the ingredients, cooking tools, recipes and the instructional video were shared.

Even though things were not the same as usual, great things happened during summer programming.  New collaborations were formed, new individuals who had previously not experience Cooperative Extension were introduced to new opportunities and important most of all, kids were given a sense of excitement, and learned new skills during uncertain times.