Our Impact
Making A Difference in Our County
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is working hard for its constituents. The following are examples of Extension’s impact in the county over the past year.
4-H Youth Development
Glynn County 4-H served all 10 public elementary schools serving nearly 1,000 fifth grade students monthly at in-school 4-H meetings. These meetings focused on hands-on research based science content that reinforces the Georgia Standards of Excellence.
One of the unique opportunities that Glynn County 4-H offered students in Glynn County Schools is live demonstrations during in-school club meetings to teach life science standards centered on animal classification. Students received hands on science programming that included touching and holding live animals to demonstrate the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates and understand the characteristics of the class reptiles. Survey results indicated that this program was many of the students’ first opportunity to hold and/or touch a snake (47%) and turtle (40%). Responses from the open-ended question “What is the most important thing that you learned today?” illustrated that students could positively identify the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates, traits of reptiles, and correctly identify snakes and turtles as vertebrates.
Students also participated in monthly county council meetings for cloverleaf (4-6 grade), junior (7-8 grade), and senior (9-12 grades) 4-H'ers. Glynn County students also had opportunity to participate in Project Achievement, Cotton Boll and Consumer Judging, Life Smarts, summer camps, workshops and conferences.
Agriculture and Natural Resources
ANR programs provide research-based information in the area of Agriculture and Natural Resources to all residents. Educational programming is developed and designed to assist individuals in making sound economical environmental decisions that affects everyday life. MC Halbrook, ANR agent for Glynn and McIntosh Counties, served both counties through 4 major program efforts in 2022. These were the Glynn County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers (MGEV), McIntosh County Bee Club, Seed Libraries in both counties, and Egg Candling Certification Courses for both counties.
The Glynn County MGEV program has been on pause while the ANR position was vacant. Since the program’s re-instatement in April of 2022, the MGEVs have logged 74.5 service hours and reached 93 client contacts. While the MGEV program is established in Glynn County, members have volunteered for McIntosh County as well to help Halbrook with her programming efforts in both counties.
The McIntosh County Bee Club was also on pause for a short while. We began meeting regularly again in October of 2022. We currently have 10 active members who are at varying levels of beekeeping experience. The monthly meetings serve as a time to update beekeepers on current educational materials, monthly schedule of tasks, and most importantly, provides a space for beekeepers to share their experiences with others! This Bee Club is open to anyone interested in bees and pollinators, not just those who are current beekeepers.
The Seed Libraries are set up for clients to “check-out” seeds, grow them for a season, harvest seeds from their crop, and then “return” the seeds back to our library. This provides an opportunity for seed sharing and maintaining heirloom plants. Over the course of 2022, we saw a great response from people interested in seed sharing. On Facebook, there were over 10,800 interactions with our posts specifically about the Seed Library. We currently have 10 participants enrolled in the library “system”. Last year, we set up a table at 4 major community events where we passed out seeds and shared info about the library and spoke to 449 people during these events.
Citizens who have backyard flocks and wish to sell their eggs need to have the Egg Candling certification in order to ensure proper food safety. Selling locally produced food cuts down on costs for consumers and sellers alike. This also provides the opportunity to meet the owners of an establishment and instill trust in the product. Having this certification not only allows citizens to sell their eggs, but it also trains them in proper candling procedure to make sure that the eggs being sold are of the highest quality. To meet this need, MC Halbrook collaborated with Haleigh Goodroe, the regional trainer with Georgia Department of Agriculture to provide two certification sessions in 2022, resulting in 59 new certified individuals.
Along with these 4 focus areas, McIntosh County processed 85 soil samples and 16 water samples to help clients gain a better understanding of their soil and water needs. For both counties, Halbrook had over 1,500 interactions with clients through office and site visits, calls, and emails. These clients reach out with questions covering plant diseases, pests, lawn maintenance, agricultural commodities, trees, and more.
Family and Consumer Sciences
The Glynn County Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) Agent, Michelle May, assists in addressing real-life issues faced by Georgians of all ages. The agent provides programs and research-based information on obesity, chronic disease, food and financial insecurity, family stresses, unhealthy housing, food safety and preservation, nutrition and more. Through networking and educational programming, the FACS Agent reached 5700 individuals in 2022.
Other health programs managed by UGA include the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). These classes teach families how to stretch their food dollars, eat healthier meals and snacks, and reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses.
During 2022, The EFNEP Program Assistant, Suzanne Walker, provided 221 adult educational sessions within Glynn, McIntosh and Long County. Of participants that graduated, 93% reported eating more fruits & vegetables and 100% reported comparing food prices more frequently at the grocery store.
Youth programming in Glynn & McIntosh Counties provided 632 educational sessions with 61% of graduating youth reporting increases in practicing safe food handling procedures and 78% reporting an increase in physical activity.