Family and Consumer Science Agent and the 4-H youth and development agent collaborated to provide Grab and Go monthly programs to 207 youth and 80 adults.  

One of the groups within our brown bag program was a community partner who deals with at-risk youth and families who have been or going through the foster care system, which included 55 adults and 92 youth each month for the year.

For this community partner bags were filled with multiple lessons from our programs, stem projects, 4-H Cooking recipes, financial hints and tips, nutrition and health facts, addiction prevention and recovery, safety issues relating to food, home and personal safety.  

Here is an outline example from one of our fall bags:

1. Halloween is around the corner.  FACS Holidays at Home has safety tips and tricks for Halloween during COVID.  You will also find a family fun scavenger hunt and a lantern activity for your family.

2. UK October recipe for “Chocolate Pumpkin Snack Cake”.  You can try them in a cake pan or as muffins.

3. 4-H Cooking “Carrot Raisin Salad”

4. 4-H Halloween STEM challenge.  Build your own candy launcher!

5. Witches hat wreath craft.

6. Nutrition info and Wally Wildcat to post pics with!

As you can see the family bags provided multiple lessons and educational materials to fill the entire month versus simpler “activity or project” brown bags like we utilized for other programs.  Our goals were to promote positive family interaction and mental health during COVID for these at risk youth and their families.

Post evaluation indicated that all families benefited from the program; improving quality family interaction. Over 70% reported it was their first-time using extension programs.  

Participant comments:  

Adults reported the youth looked forward to getting the packets.  Both adults and youth enjoyed the hands-on activities with easy to follow directions.  “We enjoyed having the time together”. 

“This got us out of our usual activities and expanded our comfort zone”. “This helped with all the anxiety of social distancing”. 

“Thank you for the hours you put into preparing these bags”. “Anytime you can spend quality time as a family it reduces stress, these activities took our minds off the pandemic and allowed us to have a little fun while spending time together”. 

“We tried new recipes and enjoyed cooking together.”

The agency reported “thank you so much, you guys went above and beyond.  No other partner has provided us as much help”.

The bag programs have concluded for the year.  We are getting constant requests to continue them in the upcoming year from community partners and program participants.