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Kelly spent her first few weeks with FoodWIse and Division of Extension focusing on making connections. She has met with Washington County Educators and staff, as well as Area 15 and statewide FoodWIse colleagues to begin learning about the many Extension programs and the ins and outs of FoodWIse. She’s also started outreach efforts to Washington County community partners, beginning to reconnect with those who have previously received FoodWIse programming and to learn about partner strengths and needs around food security and nutrition education. On October 12th, she had a Community Conversation with Rick Jensen to introduce herself further across the county.
With the new FoodWIse fiscal year 2021 beginning in October, Kelly has begun learning planning, implementation, and evaluation processes aligned with funding guidelines. She has also caught up with COVID-related FoodWIse programming updates and statewide innovations around virtual nutrition education delivery.
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Sharing Local Programming to Statewide Audiences
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Recently, Paul virtually shared his research and educational programming in Washington County to statewide nonprofit leaders, county officials, and Extension colleagues.
Paul provided Nonprofit Board Development training to 33 participants throughout the state, including several from Washington County. As a result of the training, 100% of participants agreed that they gained knowledge on board roles and responsibilities, 95% agreed that they gained knowledge on tools to use for high functioning boards, and 100% evaluated Paul’s presentation as good or excellent.
During a training provided by Extension’s Local Government Program and the Wisconsin Counties Association, Paul shared with 29 participants the process and research used to make an informed decision on county board size in Washington County.
Paul also presented during a panel discussion to 31 statewide Extension colleagues. He shared his experience facilitating virtual and in-person strategic planning process during the pandemic, including unique opportunities and challenges that should be considered while facilitating.
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Our annual Officer Training was held on Thursday, October 29th. This year, the training was held via Zoom. Youth and adult 4-H leaders from Washington County were able to interact with youth and adults from Calumet, Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan County! Washington County 4-H was represented well. 30 of the 68 participants were from Washington County.
Youth participants learned about the Wisconsin 4-H Movement and about their specific officer role. The officer sessions were led by youth leaders who had served in the officer role previously. The training was filled with engaging activities that leaders could take back and use with their clubs.
4-H values learning by doing and our participants had the opportunity to experience strategies to fill the time in between presenters, techniques to increase engagement on a virtual meeting, and ways to bring positive energy into a 4-H meeting. It was wonderful to see our youth leaders learning, leading and laughing together.
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Collaborating with County Organizations to Impact Youth
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Positive Youth Development
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Ron presented to Boys/Girls Club of Wash. Co. youth on the topic of Problem-Solving Strategies (Zoom) with 10 in attendance. He is working with their Director of to overcome internet access glitches with Kewaskum and Hartford club sites. The strategy agreed upon is to pre-record workshops for classroom presentations when Wi-Fi issues arise.
Ron attends the monthly Germantown's Youth Futures Board meeting. He assisted with the coordination Parent Chat workshops and Youth Committee activities for the remainder of the fall semester. Ron also sits on the Prevention Committee of the Wash. Co. Heroin Prevention Task Force which is developing a strategic plan to collect youth data using the Wisc. Youth Risk Behavior Survey in the second half of 2021.
He is actively engaged in communication with other Positive Youth Development professionals around the state discussing innovative programming and methods for overcoming roadblocks due to Covid-19. He attended the professional development series 'Youth Advocates for Community Health’ (session 2 of 3).
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Building the Capacity of Early Childhood Professionals
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Human Development & Relationships
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Early Childhood Professional Development: The purpose of the Child Care and Education Network of Washington County (CCEN) is to have a collaborative community network that ensures a safe, high quality child care and education system. Carol, as chairperson, coordinated a 4 hour Registry approved virtual Child Care Conference for early childhood educators and child care professionals on October 3. Over 35 attendees participated in this virtual option after being postponed from the spring. The keynote speaker, Emily Melstrand, West Bend School District Principal of Early Learning, highlighted the book “Purposeful Play” as a foundation of how children learn. Session topics included creating playful environments, facilitating language through play, nature-based play from infant to school age and an overview of the Kindness Curriculum.
On the post evaluation, 75% of the participants rated the sessions with a high or very high level of overall satisfaction.
Conference participants shared, “Love the nature learning, I believe it’s a much better way to use sensory learning for children” and “I love all the nature play and open ended resources offered.”
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Providing an Update on Current and Expected Dairy Markets
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The Eastern WI Farm Management Update is held in May and September each year and is co-chaired by Stephanie. The fall update is being held monthly via zoom from September through December. October’s session was focused on the Dairy Markets and Nutrition Update. Two Extension specialists spoke on “Pandemics, Prices, and PPDs…What Will 2021 Offer?” and “Feeding the 2020 Corn Silage Crop”. One hundred and fifty people logged on to the webinar. The webinar was recorded and is currently being edited with closed captioning to be released publicly.
As a result of attending this meeting, participants (n=53) felt they have better understanding of the current dairy market situation and what to expect for 2021 trends (+4.5 based on a 5 pt Likert scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree), and they also indicated they can make better informed decisions for my farm/clients related to 2020 corn silage (+4.0). Participants agreed this was a good use of their time (+4.3).
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