Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) Extension Service continues to focus its efforts on meeting those needs of our community that are not being addressed by other Land Grant institutions. In particular, we remain committed to the fields of youth development around the arts and natural resources, traditional foods, and traditional crafts. As such, our primary audiences are youth from Preschool through Grade 12, local artists and sustainable food producers, partner organizations with similar goals, and individuals interested in learning such skills for their families and personal lives. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Extension goals, activities, experiences, and plans are shared with our partners during regular meetings. These include the Meeting of the Minds (MOM's) group, the Mahnomen Garden Club, the Teachers Professional Development Committee for Mahnomen ISD, Early Childhood Initiative, University of Minnesota 4-H, Mahnomen Farmer's Market Group, and White Earth Boys and Girls Clubs. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The WETCC Extension staff continues to demonstrate the ability to engage the community on topics of interest within the broad themes of gardening and food preparation, traditional uses of natural resources, and youth development. The number of participants continues to grow as does the number of events we offer. This is in large measure due to the success of our collaborative model. We collaborate with entities that have audiences and need programming. We develop proposals with complementary goals and activities in order to optimize the impact of limited funds, and we remain focused on our core mission. Our collaborative youth development model involving the Boys and Girls Clubs, partners from nearby Reservations and other youth-focused organizations on White Earth has been particularly successful. A large portion of the 1033 participants in our programming are youth, primarily under the age of 13. This focus is, again, deliberate. We were certain that this audience would be the most responsive to the work and, thus, produce the greatest impacts. This assumption has been born out in practice. Youth from the Boys and Girls Clubs clamor to come back for more activities in the WETCC Community Garden. They come by on their own time as well. Perhaps more importantly, adults and leaders on the Reservation have taken note of the commitment and the success and continue to show greater trust in and reliance on our activities. Tangible evidence of this support came in the way of two groups from Global Citizens Network who visited the Reservation to do service projects for the White Earth Land Recovery Project. One group brought 15 extra fruit trees to plant at the Community Garden while the other helped weed garden beds. Both these activities were outside of the work they came to White Earth to perform. Finally, the WETCC Community Garden is a major step forward in educating our community in garden and culinary practices, and in providing access to fresh, healthy food.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) Extension Service continues to focus its efforts on meeting those needs of our community that are not being addressed by other Land Grant institutions. In particular, we remain committed to the fields of youth development around the arts and natural resources, traditional foods, and traditional crafts. As such, our primary audiences are youth from Preschool through Grade 12, local artists and sustainable food producers, partner organizations with similar goals, and individuals interested in learning such skills for their families and personal lives. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Extension goals, activities, experiences, and plans are shared with our partners during regular meetings. These include the Meeting of the Minds (MOM's) group, the Mahnomen Garden Club, the Teachers Professional Development Committee for Mahnomen ISD, Early Childhood Initiatives, University of Minnesota 4-H, Mahnomen Farmer's Market Group, and White Earth Boys and Girls Clubs. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The WETCC Extension staff was very successful in engaging the community on topics of interest within the broad themes of gardening and food preparation, traditional uses of natural resources, and youth development. The number of participants grew throughout the grant period as did the number of events we offered. This is in large measure due to the success of our collaborative model. We collaborate with entities that have audiences and need programming. We develop proposals with complementary goals and activities in order to optimize the impact of limited funds, and we remain focused on our core mission. Our collaborative youth development model involving the Boys and Girls Clubs, partners from nearby Reservations and other youth-focused organizations on White Earth has been particularly successful. A large portion of the participants in our programming are youth, primarily under the age of 13. This focus is, again, deliberate. We were certain that this audience would be the most responsive to the work and, thus, produce the greatest impacts. This assumption has been born out in practice. Youth from the Boys and Girls Clubs clamor to come back for more activities in the WETCC Community Garden. They come by on their own time as well. Perhaps more importantly, adults and leaders on the Reservation have taken note of the commitment and the success and continue to show greater trust in and reliance on our activities. Tangible evidence of this support came in the way of two groups from Global Citizens Network who visited the Reservation to do service projects for the White Earth Land Recovery Project. One group brought 15 extra fruit trees to plant at the Community Garden while the other helped weed garden beds. Both these activities were outside of the work they came to White Earth to perform. Finally, the WETCC Community Garden was a major step forward in educating our community in garden and culinary practices, and in providing access to fresh, healthy food.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/13
Outputs
Target Audience: The White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) Extension Service continues to focus its efforts on meeting those needs of our community that are not being addressed by other Land Grant institutions. In particular, we remain committed to the fields of youth development around the arts and natural resources, traditional foods, and traditional crafts. As such, our primary audiences are youth from Preschool through Grade 12, local artists and sustainable food producers, partner organizations with similar goals, and individuals interested in learning such skills for their families and personal lives. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? A focus group meeting was held in January of 2013 where local constituencies were informed about the educational and research activities of both the WETCC Environmental Science Program and Extension Service (the activities of both being highly integrated). The primary goal of the meeting was to get input from stakeholders on the educational and research goals for the Nibi-Maanoomin Institute, a research and education institute focused on nibi (water) and manoomin (wild rice), two of the most significant natural resources for the people of White Earth. This institute is envisioned to be an overarching structure for all of the Land Grant activities as well as other scientific endeavors at WETCC. The result of this focus group was the Nibi-Manoomin Institute White Paper, a draft strategic plan that is guiding planning and actions around NIFA, NASA, and NOAA funding requests. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Our efforts will need to be more focused in the next year due to budget cuts. The emphasis will be on a variety gardening, seedsaving, edible landscaping, and farmer’s market projects. Most of these involve partnerships with other organizations and/or additional funding streams. The primary audiences will continue to be youth from Preschool through High School and community groups with similar goals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During the 2012 FY WETCC Extension offered 31 different events to a total of 592 participants. These events included; monthly photo clubs at Waubun and Mahnomen High Schools; monthly artist group meetings; workshops on making jams and jellies, Scandinavian-style knives, natural paper and dyes, pine needle baskets, woodland pottery, and acorn bread; and two week-long Law Enforcement Tracking workshops. We are part of a collaborative project with 4-H- University of MN, Leech Lake Reservation and Fond du Lac to create youth focused cross-reservation seasonal camps. The August Berry Camp was hosted at White Earth. In the future, a Fall Wild Rice Camp will be hosted at Leech Lake and a Winter Camp at Fond du Lac. These camps have a cultural focus with tying 4-8th grade students to the land and nature thru learning seasonal traditional activities of the Anishinaabeg. The WETCC Community Garden project began in August 2012 with the start of garden prep and raised bed creation, and information to local community members. The first community garden at WETCC will be planted in spring 2014. The Wild Food Summit continues to be our largest, most successful event. In June 2013 we had 143 people attend with a 20+ person waiting list and a registration process that fills in only two weeks in late February. Two Law Enforcement Tracking Workshops were sponsored by WETCC during the grant period. One in September of 2012 and the other in April, 2013. Tribal law enforcement personnel and volunteers trained in these workshops have been involved in numerous missing person searches (all but one successful) and criminal/misconduct cases (including one murder investigation in Michigan solved in part through the tracking expertise).
Publications
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Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/12
Outputs
Target Audience: The White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) Extension Service continues to focus its efforts on meeting those needs of our community that are not being addressed by other Land Grant institutions. In particular, we remain committed to the fields of youth development around the arts and natural resources, traditional foods, and traditional crafts. As such, our primary audiences are youth from Preschool through Grade 12, local artists and sustainable food producers, partner organizations with similar goals, and individuals interested in learning such skills for their families and personal lives. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? A focus group meeting was held in January of 2013 where local constituencies were informed about the educational and research activities of both the WETCC Environmental Science Program and Extension Service (the activities of both being highly integrated). The primary goal of the meeting was to get input from stakeholders on the educational and research goals for the Nibi-Maanoomin Institute, a research and education institute focused on nibi (water) and manoomin (wild rice), two of the most significant natural resources for the people of White Earth. This institute is envisioned to be an overarching structure for all of the Land Grant activities as well as other scientific endeavors at WETCC. The result of this focus group was the Nibi-Manoomin Institute White Paper, a draft strategic plan that is guiding planning and actions around NIFA, NASA, and NOAA funding requests. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Our efforts will need to be more focused in the next year due to budget cuts. The emphasis will be on a variety gardening, seedsaving, edible landscaping, and farmer’s market projects. Most of these involve partnerships with other organizations and/or additional funding streams. The primary audiences will continue to be youth from Preschool through High School and community groups with similar goals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During the 2012 FY WETCC Extension offered 31 different events to a total of 592 participants. These events included; monthly photo clubs at Waubun and Mahnomen High Schools; monthly artist group meetings; workshops on making jams and jellies, Scandinavian-style knives, natural paper and dyes, pine needle baskets, woodland pottery, and acorn bread; and two week-long Law Enforcement Tracking workshops. We are part of a collaborative project with 4-H- University of MN, Leech Lake Reservation and Fond du Lac to create youth focused cross-reservation seasonal camps. The August Berry Camp was hosted at White Earth. In the future, a Fall Wild Rice Camp will be hosted at Leech Lake and a Winter Camp at Fond du Lac. These camps have a cultural focus with tying 4-8th grade students to the land and nature thru learning seasonal traditional activities of the Anishinaabeg. The WETCC Community Garden project began in August 2012 with the start of garden prep and raised bed creation, and information to local community members. The first community garden at WETCC will be planted in spring 2014. The Wild Food Summit continues to be our largest, most successful event. In June 2013 we had 143 people attend with a 20+ person waiting list and a registration process that fills in only two weeks in late February. Two Law Enforcement Tracking Workshops were sponsored by WETCC during the grant period. One in September of 2012 and the other in April, 2013. Tribal law enforcement personnel and volunteers trained in these workshops have been involved in numerous missing person searches (all but one successful) and criminal/misconduct cases (including one murder investigation in Michigan solved in part through the tracking expertise). Two ES students participated in WETCC-sponsored research opportunities; one funded by NIFA the other by NASA. Equity funds were used to support their travel to the 2012 First Americans Land-Grant Consortium conference in Albuquerque, MN to present a poster on their work. The NASA student also made an oral presentation at this conference. The ES program/courses continue to be well-regarded both locally at WETCC and throughout the TCU community in large part due to the opportunities provided.
Publications
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