Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The targeted audience addressed in the reporting period are socially disadvantage Hmong farmers. During the reporting period, we had conducted an extensive outreach with community partners to conductsychronous Food Safetyvirutal training. Changes/Problems:Greates challenge that altered the effectiveness of the project is the global pandemic. Thischallenges us to seek alternative solution and in fact, eliminate the possibility of executing some of the objective that we had hope to delivered. In some cases, we had to create a technology bank to distribute computer, create short video tutorial to acclimate farmers to computer, navigate email and access zoom, in order to fully participate in the synchronous training. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As a result of the training, Hmongfarmers were able to engage and understang Produce Safety requirement, obtain their certification and maintain compliance with Food Safety Modernization Act. From a professional stand point, Hmong staff/ professional are able to particiapte and obtain training requirement to delivery a bi-lingual and ci-cultural PSA training course for limited English speaking Hmong farmers accross the US. As such, current and future generation will have equitable access to comply with federal requirement through increasing capacity of Hmong community members to support and elevate the next iteration of farmers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Training opportunties was shared through various avenue, social media, sustag, Hmong radio and community partner organization. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our greatest challenge during this project is the global pandemic and how that has disruptted the project and limited the interaction through virtual session, as oppose to in-person activities. In the next iteraction and if COVID 19 has less impact, the approach would be to move toward an in-person learning experience and outreach to have substanial impact. In the mist of the project, it was quite challenging to conclude a plausible solutioin as impact varied depending on the location.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
There has been significant impact in acheiving the goals of the project and successfully carried out a number of bi-lingual bi-cultural food saferty training across the US, from Hmong farmers in Minnesota, Missouri, California and Washington. This success was a result of individuals who had access to technology or an understanding of technology to participate in virtual training. Overall, thetraining reached over 50 particiapnts and certified 35 Hmong farmers in completing their Produce Safety Alliance Grower's trainign course.
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Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The Hmong people came to the United States as politcal refugee after the Vietname War. Since coming to the states, they lack the skill set in this post-industrial society and reverted back to farming to earn a living for their family and they were not afraid of the labor involved. Currently, Hmong farmers plays an integral component to the local food economy, but due to language barrier and the lack of equitable access, this created a large disaparity between Hmong farmers and mainstream white small scale vegetable producers. As such the targeted audience in this project is comprise of Hmong farmers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington and North Carolina, to establish relationship with partner organziations that serve the Hmong farming community, help develop and conduct a bi-cultural bi-lingual Food Safety training program that compliment Produce Safety Rules (PSR) and comply with Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). However, due to the pandemic limited access to resources to conduct virutal training, we expanded our target audience to Hmong farmers in Missouri and California. Changes/Problems:The pandemic has been our greatest challenge, it elevate the inequity that exist for immigrants and minority due tolack of access to technology, bandwidth and let alone, the opportunity to learn and use technology as opportunties neverexist (or only if conducted in English). Thus for those who had access and knew enough to navigate their computer tojoin online for the virutal training, it was a succecssful breakthrough. For Hmong farmers who lived in close proximity to the Twin Cities metropolitan area in Minnesota, we were able to issue laptops to the individual farmers, provide a one to one training session on how to use a computer, set up an email account for them to received training invite and links to access the training portal. These were changes that was not anticipated, but was muched needed in order to carry out the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has informed us the need for more Hmong PSR trainers to fully reach out to Hmong farmers accross the United States. According to Produce Safety Alliance (PSA), there is only one Hmong speaking trainer and thus, as a result of this project we were able to entice three more Hmongspeaking PSR trainers to the national list. Once they completed the PDR train the trainer course, we conducted multiple one on one session to build the trainers understanding of Hmong language to effectively deliver course materials. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Although, the pandemic had a large impact on conducting in person trainings, we were able to supplement in person training with a mutil-day virutal training that complied with PSR. Furthermore, due to the challenges we all encountered, PSR conducted a pilot project- "Alternative Language PSR course" thatallowed Non-English and Non-Spanish trainer to conduct a certified PSR training in their native tongue as long as the trainer have completed the PSR Train the Trainer course. As a result, we had conducted three virutal bi-lingual bi-cultural Hmong PSR training tofarmers in Minnesota, Missouri and California. Due to the lack of technology and adequate bandwidth, we were not able to conduct training to other partner organization and farmers in Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon and North Carolina. Prior to the day of the training, we sent a mass email to all partner organization, set up an online registration and called the farmer for verification. Once verified, trainingmaterials was delivered to their place of resident andon the day of thetraining, every participant physically show their training manual and was required tokeep their camera on to officially certified their particiaption. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We hope that in the next reporting period, we would be able to conduct the trainings in person- eliminating the issue of access to technology and bandwidth, reach out to a larger audience and continue to build Hmongfarmers capacity around best practices to food safety and obtain their Produce Safety Rule Grower training certificate.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Although,faced with numerous challenges from the pandemic, we were able to be creative in our approach; we issuecomputers, trained Hmongfarmers how to use a computer, create an email account and showed them how to navigate ZOOM to conduct meetings and trainings. The challenges faced was countered with Hmong farmers to utlize technology as social distancing protocols was enforce and in fact, enhancetheir confidence about technology, remote meeting and the ability to carry out a fully certified PSR "growers" training that was conducted in Hmong. Futhermore, these practices was also carried out in other states such as Missouri and California. As a result of the bi-lingual bi-cultural training, Hmong farmers grew a deeper understanding of food safety and the requirement of Produce Safety Rules. Furthermore, due to the fact that we able to conduct the training in Hmong, language barrier was not an issue and we were able to address a large audience of non-English speaking Hmong farmers, overalltraining over 40 Hmong farmers.
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Hmong farmers has had a long history of farming since coming to the United States as politcal refugee after the Vietnam War. Currently, Hmong farmers plays an intergal component to the local food economy, but due to language barrier, has been challenged to obtain equitable access to resources that will support their farming operation, let alone information to state and federal rules and regulation. As such, the target audience in this project is compromise of Hmong farmers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington and North Carolina, to establish relation with partner organizations that serves the Hmogn farming community anddevelop and conducta bi-lingual bi-cultural Food Safety training program that compliment Produce Safety Rules (FSMA). Changes/Problems:The COVID pandemic has posed a great problemthat divertedour intended practices and caused us to change our approach. The purpose of the project was intendedto conduct in person food safety training withHmong farmers in Minnesota and across the United States that include trainingin an trusted space that is reflected oftheir community, establish more trusting relationship to reduce theanxiety they have with federal or state agency through in person meetings,and be mentally and physically present to establish engaging converastion and activities, all of which is to address the fact thatmany Hmong farmers do not read or write English. Yet, the pandemic has challenged us to reflect on the intended practices, assess challenges and barriers of Hmong farmers, seek alternative form while meeting social distancing guideline and practice. What came out of these assessment is that the majority of Hmong farmers haslimited access to technology, theylack computer literacy and usage startingwith turning"on" the computer toaccessing the appropiatesoftware tologon and join thevirutally training. Overall, these challenges truly protrayedthe inequity that exist among the Hmong farmers and other immigrant and refugee farming commnuity. As such, in Minnesota we started a technology bank that allowed Hmong farmers to check out computer for training and prior to recieving their computer;we would conduct a one to one tutorial, set them up with an email address, install the virtual meeting software, create handouts and short video for each farmer to review to ease this transition and better prepare them to participate in the virtualy training session. As these addtional practices are implemented inMinnesota, our partner organization are struggling to obtain the necessary tools that enable Hmong farmers to participate, on top ofstate restrictions that prevents any in person activities from happening, pausing all food safety training session for the time. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project allowed HAFA to deepen our knowledge around best practices to food safety and fully understand Produce Safety Rules. The project also allowed HAFA to worked with Hmong indiviudals on a one to one basisto increase their knowledge base on food safety rulesand worked with them to develop key Hmong terminology for the bi-lingual bi-cultural training and as supplemental.Furthermore, two Hmong speaking individual pursued andcompletedPSA's Train the Trainer course, adding more Hmong speaking trainers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Over the course of the project, materials generated for the bi-lingual bi-cultural training, which includeskey Hmong term and a summary of each PSA module,was added into each produce safety manual for Hmong farmers to reference during the training. Furthermore, these information was shared with partner organizations andpassed onto to the Hmong farming community to inform them of produce safety practices and in preparation for the food safety training. Prior to each of the training event, weuse mutilple tactics to reach out to our Hmongfarming community to inform them of the upcoming training, such activity includes: contacting Hmongfarmersdirectly, promote the training onHmong radio, post it on social media and hand and mail out flyers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Due the challenges ofthe COVID pandemic, we hope to conduct in person training as covid restrictions are lifted and until then, will continue toconduct virtually training over the course of the grant period. Furthermore, as PSA training restriction are lifted and alternative language are accepted, we plan on conducting morecertifate bearing produce safety training, which has greater benefits that its afederally recognize trainingand overall, haslasting impact for the life of their farming operation.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the course of the project, the Hmong American Farmers Association was able to transcibe key Produce Safety Rules and Regulation into Hmong, withmaterials from Produce Safety Alliance training module,that was used to conduct a bi-cultural bi-lingual PSA (non-certified) training for Hmong farmers in Minnesota. This non-certificate bearing course was conducted with 17 Hmong participantswho showed a 75% increase knowlege on Produce Safety requirements. While conducting in field assessment with particiapting Hmong farmers after the training, 100% implement Produce Safety practices and established Food Safety Plan for their farm. Training outcome and materials from the first session was sharedwith partner organizations in Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington and North Carolina in preparation for a Hmong produce training in the respected region. However, due to the COVID pandemic the training was cancelled. As a result of the pandemic, produce safety training transitioned to virtual session and thus the first Hmong bi-lingual bi-cultural certificate bearing Produce Safety training wasconductwith 14 Hmong participants.
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