We are excited to be finalizing our the plans for our third Annual Meeting to be held in Mesa Arizona October 15-18, 2019.
The Annual meeting allows us to bring together all project and advisory team members to assess the past year’s accomplishments, identify needs and strategies for the coming year and put together an Action Plan to ensure we have the resources we need to meet our Year 3 objectives.
Following a brief “pause” in most of our local leadership team’s schedule to accommodate seasonal farming priorities we have now resumed our strategic action discussion in our project sites.
The majority of our leadership groups’ efforts prior to this summer have focused on creating a common understanding of each group’s perspectives, issues, challenges, and successes.
As we move into late summer and early Fall, our facilitators and local leadership groups are now working toward identifying their research, education and information, and engagement priorities – and to develop the action strategies to meet these objectives.
For more information related to specific site updates please see each site’s page.
We begin 2019 with the formal kick-off of engagement activities that will form the backbone of community-based activities and research. To date, four out of our five sites (two each in Nebraska and Pennsylvania) have established their leadership teams. These leadership teams will be the focal point of our coordination, assistance, informational and research efforts. Our Arizona site (Verde Valley) will be initiating their effort within a month.
Each team (comprised of a diverse set of stakeholders including farmers and farm organization, scientists, technical service providers and other organizations and decision makers) is now embarking on a 12-18 month strategic planning process. These processes are designed to assist them identify and prioritize the challenges, information needs, resources and strategies required to address the water and agriculture issues that matter most to them. You can find out more about each site and their initial activities on our Project Sites tab.
Last month also saw the start of our external webinar series designed to encourage sharing of scholarship and practitioners’ experience with community-based stakeholder engagement in natural resources. We began this series with a look at the Voluntary Stewardship program presented by Dr. Michael Kern, Director of the William D. Ruckelhaus Center and Associate Professor of Extension at Washington State University. You can find the slides and recording of Dr. Kern’s presentation here.