Over the summer, I had the idea of doing a community scavenger hunt. I though that it would be a great program that could get families involved in the community and it would give them something to do during our COVID-19 shut down. I reached out to a local business owner who is has been very interested in partnering with me in my "community improvement" efforts over the past year. She loved the idea and thought that we could use this program to showcase some of the historical locations in our community. To make it even more involved, we decided to contact local business owners to see if they would donate a small prize for the program. 

We met several times over the course of a month and got all of the details lined out. The plan was to implement the program during the month of July. Each week we would put out the "clues" to the historical location on Monday and participants would have to send their answers along with a picture of the location to me by the Friday of that week. By sending pictures, the participants not only had to know about the history to solve the clue, but they also had to visit the location and hopefully learn more about it. 

Kristie Marie, the local business owner, created the clues with the help of our local tourism president. I was responsible for sharing the clues on social media and on flyers around town. We selected four locations that we thought had the greatest significance in the county, and they were: 1) Robertson County Courthouse, 2) Louisiana Hotel, 3) Blue Licks State Park, and 4) Johnson Covered Bridge. From the local businesses, we received enough prizes to draw three names each week and have multiple prizes for the final drawing. We did a Facebook Live each week to announce the winners and also advertise for the businesses who had donated. 

There were a total of 18 businesses who donated items for the program. In order to take another step to advertise for those businesses, our local tourism gave a donation in order to make a banner that we hung up at the four-way in town that listed all of the businesses. We wanted to make sure they were advertised in several locations and several ways in order to increase their awareness and their business. 

We had nearly 30 participants over the course of the program and several people completed each week's clues. We had several people who had never participated in Extension programming before, along with youth, parents, community members, and so many more! The program was such a huge success that it drew the attention of Katie Pratt who writes articles for the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service. She contacted me about the program and also interviewed Kristie Marie (local business owner) and Amanda Gray (a participant). She wrote the article and it was featured in several locations including Facebook and the Lexington Herald. 

I never would have imagined that our small town program would create such an impact, but it did on several levels. It was able to get community members out of their homes and get them interested in the history of our community. It was able to advertise for our local businesses who donated items to the program. Finally, it was able to showcase an amazing program that Extension offered with the collaboration of others in the community.