APPLICATIONS NOW BEING ACCEPTED
Are you currently an agricultural educator or service provider working with beginning farmers, young farmers, or women farmers in the North Central Region? Are you addressing issues of farm viability, farm succession, or farm mental health? Do you see a need among your audiences to integrate issues related to childcare, health care, and health insurance into whole farm programming? If so, we invite you to apply to this new professional development opportunity to become a more confident educator in these topics.
USDA and CDC research shows that childcare, healthcare, and health insurance impact farm economic development, risk management, farm safety, and quality of life. To address these issues Ohio State University and American Farmland Trust (AFT) are offering a new opportunity to provide you with the tools, knowledge, and ability to offer programs that address childcare, health care, and health insurance decision making. We are seeking 10 agricultural educators from the North Central Region to serve as partners and pilot testers of this curriculum.
Working with a highly skilled and diverse team of collaborators, you will learn how to deliver the curriculum, pilot it with the audiences you serve, and help us improve it so that it meets the needs of diverse farming audiences. You will have access to the refined materials for future programming. This work will occur over two years beginning Fall 2024 and continuing through the summer of 2026.
Your commitment as an educator:
- Participate in two 1 hour distance learning activities in September 2024 taught by leading experts.
- Attend one in-person 2.5-day workshop, October 29-31, 2024, to be trained in the content, curriculum, and delivery methods, receive educational materials, and network with other educators.
- Deliver training to farmers to field test and evaluate the curriculum, materials and training methods.
- Participate in 2 of 4 peer-to-peer networking virtual calls in per year in 2024 and 2025 to share information, lessons learned and successful practices.
Your benefits as an educator:
- Receive a $2,000 stipend to cover time and travel to the October 2024 training at the OSU Wooster Campus.
- Gain confidence presenting information on childcare, health care, and health insurance to farming audiences.
- Gain new knowledge, skills, and innovative teaching tools to deliver farmer decision making tools connected to childcare, health care, and health insurance.
- Be part of an interactive and engaging professional development program designed to enhance your programs with practical skills and personalized support.
- Expand your network of allied professionals.
Who should apply?
- Educators and technical service providers who work directly with farming audiences in the North Central region.
- Individuals who work for Extension, nonprofit organizations and public agencies are all eligible to apply.
- Preference given to applicants applying as teams of two that include representatives who have expertise in: agriculture business, whole farm planning, risk management, beginning farmers, small and medium farms, women in agriculture, farm mental health, community development, rural health, public health, family and consumer sciences, or other relevant background.
- No prerequisite knowledge about health insurance or childcare is required.
Deadline to apply: August 1, 2024.
Apply On-line Here
Contact: Project Coordinator Hannah Budge at Budge.10@osu.edu
Funding is provided by the North Central Region SARE program under project number ENC23-225.