What stories help you be an effective Extension worker? How do you use stories to help others value and cherish our work?

Economic Development

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program led by Families Extension Trained volunteers returned over $1 million in earned income tax credit to 795 low resource individuals that they in turn spent in communities in 29 Iowa counties.

K-12 Outreach

Over 400 parents and their children 10-14 years of age were reached by the Strengthening Families Program in the last year reducing youth problem behavior and returning $9.60 for every $1 spent on the program.

Health and Wellbeing

EFNEP and FNP nutrition education reached 1,833 low income families increasing their consumption of fruits and vegetables-a top strategy for the Governor’s Healthiest State Initiative to reduce chronic disease and health care costs.

Food and the Environment

In the last year, 1,098 Iowans participated in the ServSafe food safety certification program. Of these participants, 92% successfully received certification that prevents foodborne illness and contributes towards reduced health care costs and business profitability.

What other public value would you like The Great Zucchini to share about your programming?

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Helps Families Build Financial Security: The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) augments the wages of low- and moderate-income workers and, in turn, this flow of income makes a substantial economic impact in local communities. EITC recipients circulate their refunds through the local economy, creating a ripple effect that exceeds the size of the original refund. This money strengthens neighborhoods, assists small businesses, and spurs local economic development.  ISU Extension worked with community partners to recruit and train 60 volunteers to provide free tax preparation services to low- and moderate-income families through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. In 2012, VITA volunteers working at 34 VITA sites helped 1,621 low- and moderate-income Iowans complete income tax returns. Special efforts were made to increase awareness of the EITC and VITA in rural Iowa. 795 filers qualified for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and received $1,091,572 in the 29 counties that participated in the Extension-community partnerships to expand VITA programs in rural Iowa.

Early Childhood Programs: The Better Kid Care New Staff Orientation program has been adopted by Iowa as a key component for stabilizing workforce turnover and providing a basic level of knowledge for new early childhood teachers and assistant teachers who may have limited education and experience.  This outstanding program provides new teachers with 30-lessons over a four month period. Teachers view DVD demonstrations, practice and fulfill on-site activities and complete workbook lessons, which are sent into Iowa State University for review. Currently 225 centers and preschools (15% of Iowa licensed programs) participate in the Better Kid Care New Staff Orientation (NSO) program. As a result of participating in NSO program, 678 child care center staff teachers have completed a total of 10,848 training hours and 116 child care center directors completed 696 training hours.  All report making significant gains in knowledge and program improvements. NSO program data indicates that 4934 individuals completed Better Kid Care New Staff Orientation and 1286 directors have participated in the NSO Directors’ Training since the program’s inception in 2007.  

Serv Safe:Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Nutrition and Health Specialists are registered instructors for the National Restaurant Association’s Educational Foundation’s internationally recognized food safety certification program. The ServSafe® food safety certification program has been taught by ISU Extension and Outreach Specialists for over 15 years. In the year between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, over 1000 Iowans participated in an ISU Extension and Outreach taught ServSafe® course, with 92% successfully earning certification. Of the 1098 participants, over half (about 60%) were from for-profit commercial operations that prepared and/or sold food people away from home. Commercial operations recognize the value of training staff in safe food handling procedures, as an incidence of a foodborne illness can be devastating for business. Other participants were those involved in foodservices in non-profit types of operations, such as schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. Proper preparation, holding and service of food is critical in these locations as participants in these meal programs are frequently considered at greater risk of contracting a foodborne illness due to compromised immune systems. 

Thanks to all of you who help make this important work possible. How else do you find we contribute to economic development through our educaitonal programs?

This week I discovered a new resource that expanded my view of maps. An iPad app called “Think” was created by IBM. One section of the app explores mapping. The app provides multiple ways we use maps to aid navigation, reveal scale, depict change, save lives, track flow, reveal structure, show hierarchy, track resources, structure knowledge, and organize time.

So the next time you work with a logic model or another type of map. “Think” about the new ways you can use it to enrich your work and your life. I sure hope I don’t bike off the trail on the way home today as I ponder how a logic model helps me track flow and save lives!

What is the wonderful life you are helping give to the children and families we work with?

- Extension is the local and online educational leader for a safe and affordable food supply, healthy people and families, sustainable natural resources, adapting to varying climate, and community economic vitality.

- Extension delivers education programs based on research nationally and locally.

- Extension operates through the land-grant university system.

- Extension is coordinated at the national level by the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy.

I don’t know about you, but I would rarely find anyone motived by several of these points to enhance their support or understanding of our work. I prefer talking points like:

- ISU Extension and Outreach helps decrease health care costs by improving nutritional practices in over 9,000 adults in Iowa each year.

- ISU Extension and Outreach helps improve community viability by providing over $800,000 in Earned Income Tax Credit for individuals in Iowa that they in turn spend in their communities.

- ISU Extension and Outreach decreases taxpayer costs by reducing youth risk behaviors when almost 25,000 Iowa children are cared for in improved child care settings.

What are your elevator speeches to help enhance support for our work?

I separate Extension scholarship products into three categories:

- Peer (journal articles, conference presentations, grants/competitive contracts)

- Applied (curricula, materials, guides, technical assistance, policy briefs, training videos, tool kits, assessment instruments, issue forum proceedings, content apps)

-Community (forums/workshops, newsletters, web sites, presentations, reports, designs, displays, photovoice exhibits, PSAs, podcasts)

In addition, these end products need to be developed in a context that includes clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective presentation, and reflective critique (Glasser et al.). How do you build the development of scholarly products into your Extension work?

Our marketing should highlight the whole life span, address households (not just families), indicate the convenience of our educational opportunities and our one stop shop for information and education. We should continue to be known for nutrition education, retirement planning, personal finance, and literacy education. Rural areas need us and our unbiased approach since we listen and then help. We should continue to provide safe, confidential, and anonymous education.

We should improve our marketing by also making our newsletters available in hard copy and through listserves. We need to continue to raise awareness of our work through emails sent to clients from people they trust (our parters) and work more fully with groups to have them market us. Leverage points for marketing include using a multi-media approach that blends old and new methods of communication  (realizing that person-to-person communication is still key to reaching people).

Barriers the council believes we need to overcome to better market ourselves are capturing people’s attention and emphasizing that ISUEO is a public resource connectd to ISU research, expanding the perception of Extension beyond agriculture and 4-H. and we need to be seen as quickly accessbile from many plces in the state and also leading people to other helpful resources.  They suggested conducting a partnership review to see what topic and geographic coverage our programs have across the state and to continue nurturing partnerships for mutual benefit.

Finally, they suggested we share our stories more fully and stated the public value of our work needs to be told. They want us to better quantify the impacts of some of our work and provide integrated success stories that focus on addressing issues rather than just programs we conducted. They also believe in story telling that helps partners feel valued and the power of testimonials.

I found this to be sage advice for sharing and building our educational footprint across the state. I hope you do too!

I’d love to hear how you’ve used our report to share our story and better help people understand our public value.