Deadline: 1-Feb-22
The Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (Western SARE) is soliciting applications for its Program Education and Outreach Enhancement Project to enhance the overall educational impact of the Western SARE sustainable agriculture program through improved engagement and learning among the diverse agricultural producer groups represented throughout the western SARE region.
Objectives
Overall project objectives are to:
- Evaluate existing learning styles information and develop a white paper or guide that identifies and synthesizes effective methods, best practices, and science-based techniques for producer-relevant outreach and engagement that best serve traditional and underrepresented agricultural producer groups across the West and Pacific Islands. Aside from summarizing published information, this evaluation should include innovative recommendations for improved producer engagement and education among the target audiences.
- Develop an educational resource (such as a handbook and/or web-based program), from findings in objective 1 that can inform SARE projects region-wide. Overall, the final product must:
- Be easy to implement for individuals with a broad spectrum of experience and formal educational training.
- Enhance the capacity of SARE projects to develop producer partnerships, and to achieve effective education and outreach objectives related to understanding and implementation of research findings among traditional and underrepresented producer groups.
- Include science-based and easy-to-follow training and implementation guidelines.
- Be published in a print and online format. The online format must be permanently available to the public at no charge.
Funding Information
- The budget for this project is not to exceed $65,000, and will be awarded as a contracted services agreement from Montana State University.
Criteria
- Current practices for producer education methods need re-evaluation and improvement to better accommodate learning styles of diverse producer groups. The background of agricultural producer groups represented in the Western SARE region are vast and range from large-scale, advanced production operations to subsistence.
- This RFA encourages creative approaches to:
- identify and synthesize the current state of knowledge and best practices for effective education, outreach, and engagement to reach diverse agriculture producer and stakeholder groups across the Western SARE region, and develop recommendations for improved producer engagement;
- from outcomes of objective 1, develop an educational resource or best practices guide that can be used to effectively disseminate Western SARE research with producers across the region.
For more information, visit https://western.sare.org/