Author: Dianne Hayward
Planning Unit: Cumberland County CES
Major Program: Nutrition and Food Systems General
Outcome: Initial Outcome
Agriculture, and Natural Resources agent, Family and Consumer Science agent .and Nutrition Education Program Assistant Combined forces to provide a very comprehensive Family oriented Take Out Bag program for our community families during a time of great confusion and depression.
We felt like our community needed so sense of normalcy with so many other things to deal with like no school, some had no work,which also meant economic hardship.
The agents and assistants pooled their resources and decided to each put in some information on safe practices for staying health during the crisis and then adding activities for the whole family to participate in. We limited the program to 20 families.The ANR Agent added gardening activities , bird feeder projects, butterfly gardens, and much more, the FCS Agent talked about keeping you and your house clean and safe, hand washing, and disinfecting and also put in activities for making crafts and gifts and personal protection equipment for the families . As the NEP Assistant I had already pre surveyed some of these adults so I focused on teaching families how to stretch their food dollars by growing food in their garden and how to use local commodity foods in healthy nutritious recipes and providing some small kitchen gadgets to help in preparing these dishes. We also gave out materials to help families keep physically and mentally fit like crosswords, word finds, chair exercises and setting up a new garden with the children.
The families really enjoyed the program and posted lots photos and stories on our facebook pages. Some families said it was good to see their children learning these things nearly all our families completed the series including the post surveys.
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