Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
- Education and Training: workshop
- Farm Business Management: agritourism
- Sustainable Communities: community development
Proposal abstract:
Communities across Guam and the NMI hold strong potential for agritourism development due to their rich cultural heritage, local food traditions, diverse agricultural landscapes, and unique natural environments. However, most villages lack structured tools and trained personnel to identify tourism assets, assess visitor readiness, and support farmers who wish to integrate agritourism into their operations. Farmers, municipal leaders, and community organizations continue to request guidance on converting local strengths into sustainable economic opportunities. Extension professionals and nonprofit partners also need additional training and resources to facilitate community-driven agritourism planning.
This project establishes a Train-the-Trainer Professional Development Program grounded in the First Impressions Tourism (FIT) model and community-based asset mapping. The initiative equips Extension agents, community leaders, and agriculture-tourism partners with practical frameworks to guide village-level agritourism planning. The program consists of two phases.
Phase 1 delivers Tourism Asset Identification Workshops in eight communities (four in Guam, four in the NMI). Workshops engage local leaders in mapping cultural, agricultural, historic, environmental, and culinary assets and include a community visioning exercise inspired by the One-Village-One-Product (OVOP) model. Each village then develops a customized FIT visitor survey to evaluate first-time visitor perceptions.
Phase 2 deploys first-time visitors on 3-night/4-day FIT assessments to evaluate visitor experience, hospitality, signage, farm-tour opportunities, local food availability, and agritourism readiness. FIT visitors document findings through photos, ratings, and written reports, offering communities unbiased, experience-based insights.
The project will train and certify 40 agritourism facilitators, complete eight community asset maps, conduct 24 FIT assessments, and produce action plans. All activities culminate in community forums, strategy development sessions, and publication of agritourism toolkits.
By strengthening Extension capacity and empowering community leadership, this project supports farmers in diversifying income and builds a sustainable regional agritourism model that enhances profitability, cultural preservation, environmental stewardship, and food system resilience across the Western Pacific.
Project objectives from proposal:
The first objective is to build community capacity by increasing the ability of Extension educators, municipal leaders, and agritourism stakeholders to understand and apply community asset mapping as a tool for agritourism planning. By the end of the project, forty participants will demonstrate increased proficiency in identifying cultural, agricultural, environmental, and culinary assets, and in guiding communities through structured tourism assessments.
The second objective focuses on strengthening participants' ability to develop comprehensive village-level tourism asset inventories. Through training and applied practice, participants will gain the technical skills needed to document community resources, analyze their potential for agritourism, and evaluate how local identity and cultural heritage can support economic diversification.
The third objective is to build participant capacity to implement the First Impressions Tourism (FIT) assessment model. At least twenty-four trained individuals will be able to conduct structured, experience-based visitor assessments, interpret visitor perspectives, and integrate these perceptions into agritourism planning frameworks at the village level.
The fourth objective aims to enhance data literacy among Extension and community leaders. Participants will learn to analyze FIT visitor data, identify patterns and opportunities, and translate findings into actionable community reports and planning recommendations that support sustainable agritourism development.
The fifth objective is to improve participants' ability to communicate agritourism insights and guide community decision-making. By the project's completion, participants will demonstrate increased competency in delivering community presentations, preparing policy briefs, and utilizing agritourism toolkits that promote future investment and farmer participation.
Collectively, these objectives ensure measurable improvements in professional knowledge, technical skills, and confidence to support agritourism as a pathway for sustainable agriculture and rural resilience.