Let me tell you that I am not technology savvy and neither are most of my clients. I am the SNAP-Ed Assistant for Cumberland County and have been struggling to hold any programs with most of our in person programs banned due to covid restrictions. I had to try and do our programs virtually online with zoom and facebook, with these came all the training on how to run our programs. HELP!  I like so many others were pushed into this virtual world.  How was I going to encourage my clients to use these programs. I did not know. Fast forward and after many webinars and zoom trainings and encouragement from our family and consumer science agent and staff assistant I (We) have succeeded in running two 8 week” Cooking with Di” programs with a combination of facebook videos and 30 minute lessons and programs in a bag pick up each week with 10 families each session. Now I know how the students at home on virtual schooling feel! This was very stressful at first but I muddled threw and learnt a lot.

The programs were advertised as cooking classes rather than healthy choices as we felt the community needed a distraction from the stresses of life at this time and it was a highlight of their week for many of our clients. Some of our clients thanked us for running the programs this way as they were caring for family and children who were now at home instead of at work or in school and needed a distraction from all the covid news.

We did try to run the facebook live program, but no one could agree on a set day to be on and people just lost interest. The prerecorded video program participants could watch the same recipe video at their own time, see the lesson hints then take out their assignments from their weekly healthy choice bags and complete these how they thought. Some got the whole family involved. These lessons Included ice breakers from the curriculum made into word finds, crosswords, food safety questions and so on. The participants then made the recipe some time during the week and posted their own versions on the Cooking with Di Facebook page. The following week they returned their assignments and waited to see if they were prize winners of incentive items such as meat thermometers, cooler bags and many other small items that could reinforce what they were learning. They had to complete all classes to be eligible for the main prize draw which was a crock pot. 9 out ten families completed both classes. The FCS Agent helped with the first program by helping cooking the recipes with me while the staff assistant photographed us for the videos.

I learned from the first program that the participants didn’t have a clear understanding of what we wanted them to learn from the cooking class and need more hints incorporated into both the video and the written curriculum activities. I had pre and post surveyed the clients and in the second program (winter warmth) clients had 10% more improvements in the food resource management and food safety behaviors and 16% more improvement in Diet Quality behavior. The successes are many mine was overcoming my use of technology fears and the participants learned new healthy recipes with some helpful hints on shopping, budgeting, food safety, much more.