Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
Proposal abstract:
The Program Assistant (PA) manages communications, advertising, travel scholarships, budget accounting (for honoraria, event registrations, travel and lodging), updates calendar, facilitates meetings, and implements suggestions from the NC SARE Advisory Council (AC) and State Coordinators. The PA prepares outcomes of training activities for review by the NC SARE State Coordinators and/or the NC SARE AC. The PA also prepares the annual report and the coming year MSP and PA proposals for the State Coordinators and AC for review and approval. The PA will be supervised by the NC SARE State Coordinators, currently Drs. Chris Reberg-Horton at NCSU and Sanjun Gu at NCA&T.
Project objectives from proposal:
NC SARE main outreach objective is to promote and help provide sustainable agriculture trainings for Cooperative Extension agents, NRCS and Soil and Water personnel, appropriate non-profit personnel, and mentor farmers so that these agriculture teachers and leaders can pass on information and knowledge of sustainable agriculture practices to farmers, land owners, and the public. NC SARE will provide PD travel scholarships
to at least 30 agents, personnel, and/or farmers to attend the CFSA SAC and the
to 5-7 agents, personnel, and/or farmer to attend the SSAWG Conference
to 5-10 agents, personnel, and/or farmers to attend CEFS or other training events
to 1-5 agents to attend other sustainable agriculture trainings that become available in NC
We expect to offer scholarships to trainings to a total of at least 50 agents, personnel, and/or mentor farmers. Sustainable agriculture trainings and scholarship opportunities will be publicized via the NC SARE website, twitter, and NC Extension Portal. NC SARE manages the North Carolina Sustainable Agriculture website www.sustainableag.ces.ncsu.edu and maintains a regularly updated events calendar to promote local, regional and national sustainable agriculture trainings. NC SARE also manages the NC SARE twitter account and uses the account for outreach about sustainable ag training events and scholarships, as well as sustainable ag news from SARE. NC SARE outreach includes setting up information
booths/pull-up type posters at major sustainable agriculture events.
NC SARE Travel Scholarships provide NCCES educators, NC Soil and Water Conservationists, and NC NRCS personnel opportunities to receive relevant trainings which suit the unique needs of the individual educators, their counties and their constituents. These diversified trainings provide learning opportunities that cover the broad scope of sustainable agriculture, fulfilling the goal of the SARE program to provide diverse education in sustainable agriculture. The primary expected outcome is to have a broader base of NCCES educators trained in sustainable agriculture. This outcome will be measured by evaluations following training events.