MGEV Glenda Garris in Henry County has been actively involved in working with community gardens throughout Henry County. In fact, she was instrumental in establishing Community Gardens of Henry County, Inc., several years ago. The organization does the lion’s share of organizing and managing the community gardens, but they call upon Extension to offer educational classes to the gardeners who use the community garden plots. In fact, she wants to propose a “Grow Your Own” class series to be offered by MGEVs to the community gardeners. To get Extension approval for the series, she used the “Submit a Project” feature in MGLOG, the new recordkeeping system.
She logged in using her ID and password, and from the main menu, she chose “Submit a Project.” The first section asked for some BASIC PROJECT INFORMATION, such as the title of the project, the person proposing (herself — easy to choose from the drop-down list), and the purpose of the project — to teach community gardeners how to grow vegetables using seeds and transplants. She was asked to choose a State Initiative to describe the general focus of the project. She checked the descriptions here, and chose “Home Food Production.” She enter a Projected Start Date of May 3 and Projected End Date of August 16, the last class that she plans to offer.
The next section asked for KEYWORDS. She could pick up to six key words to tell a little more about the project, so she chose “vegetables,” “community gardens,” “civic or garden club presentations (speakers’ bureau),” and “teaching adult classes.”
Under PROJECT RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS, she entered 5 volunteers are needed for this project, and she expects the project to need about 45 volunteer hours. MGEVs might benefit from some public speaking training or expertise in community gardens and growing vegetables. As far as funding goes, $50 is needed to cover the cost of printing handouts for the class series. Local funds can cover this. Glenda listed Community Gardens of Henry County, Inc. as another group involved in the series.
Glenda had to think about the next section, ANTICIPATED EFFECTS AND VALUES. She knew there were SO MANY good things that would result from this series – -how to write all of them?! She finally decided to keep it brief and listed “Community gardeners in Henry County will be able to grow vegetables for their personal use because they were able to attend these classes. This series of classes available within the community will help increase access to fresh vegetables for 37 households.”
The next section PROCEDURES REQUIRED FOR IMPLEMENTATION, SUSTAINABILITY, AND EVALUATION, really just wanted to know what the plan is. Essentially, 5 MGEVS will prepare 4 presentations on growing vegetables from seed and transplant, including pest and disease management. They will present the classes on the third Saturday at the public pavilion near the community garden plots. Attendance will be taken, some preliminary questions asked at the first class, and then during the last class, some follow-up questions will be asked to see how the participants have benefited from the classes. This is a one-year project, so there is no plan for keeping the classes going. Glenda figured that if people could grow vegetables and eat them in their weekly meals that the MGEVs would have been successful in their instruction.
After that, Glenda pressed the “Insert Record” (back at the top) to save the entry. She didn’t see it immediately appear on the Project List, but then she realized that her agent, Frank Hancock, has to first review the proposal and then approve it. Once he does this, the “Grow Your Own” garden lecture series will appear on the Project List.
It took about 15 minutes to enter this information into MGLOG, so Glenda had time to water in some transplants she had put in her own garden before she went to the Extension office to volunteer on the Help Desk!
While Glenda is truly a MGEV and Frank is truly the Extension Agent in Henry County, this particular project is realistic but fictitious and for educational purposes only.