UGA Cooperative Extension is a collaboration between UGA CAES and UGA FACS.

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Richmond County
UGA Extension Office

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.

Download our annual report (pdf)

4-H Youth Development

Richmond County 4-H currently serves 1,940 youth in grades 3-12 with ninety six clubs: 69 during school and 13 after school. We held 125 activities throughout the year. Our biggest accomplishment has been the acquisition of 4-H classroom and clubhouse space in the vacant Willis Foreman Elementary School. Richmond County School System has donated the use of 2 classrooms, a large multipurpose room, 2 restrooms, and 1 kitchen area for 4-H functions. The use of the space includes utilities and wi-fi use. This amounts to an in-kind donation valued at over $90,000 annually and contributes largely to our growth in programming over the past year.

Agriculture and Natural Resources

In the Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR) part of Extension, we hosted another Master Gardener Extension Volunteer training and graduated 29 individuals. We currently have 167 active Master Gardener Volunteers who donate 4,700 hours of volunteer service back to the community. The ANR Agent taught 59 educational sessions with over 1,200 in person contacts. Media presence was a strong point of the ANR Agent with monthly radio broadcasts, multiple television appearances and weekly newspaper articles to educate citizens of our community and beyond.

Family and Consumer Sciences

During 2025, FACS Agent Dr Okpala delivered over 290 program sessions, resulting in more than 7,000 contacts, with a focus on food safety (55%) and health wellness (45%) programming.
Examples of feedback from community members include:
- " My blood pressure is now much better after I started to do more exercise, eat less, and eat more vegetables."
- " I now eat fruits and vegetables. I did not like them before, but you encouraged me to try."
- " I am making effort to gradually reduce my weight. Thank you for teaching me I can start by reducing portion sizes of each meal. I have started and it is helping a lot."
- " My credit score has started to increase, and now I have more peace of mind. I can now sleep better at night."
- " My cholesterol level has started to stabilize because I reduced the meal portions, eat more vegetables, and started evening walks."

Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program

UGA EFNEP offers practical nutrition and physical activity information, food safety education, food resource management strategies and recipe demonstrations within community settings and high schools throughout Richmond County. EFNEP provides interactive series-based sessions allowing participants to earn a certification of completion. Offering programming to youth and adults provides multiple opportunities to deliver researched based nutrition education throughout Richmond County.