2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Extension Master Gardener (EMG) volunteers are individuals trained and coordinated by Extension employees in 49 states. They are recruited and trained specifically to increase Extension’s capacity to deliver horticulture and gardening information as well as to implement educational programming that meets local issues and needs, such as food insecurity. Community gardens are recognized as a means of increasing access to fresh food and are commonly listed as EMG projects in local and state reports. The number of pounds of produce grown annually under EMG leadership in these gardens is included as a metric in the EMG national program report. Contributions of EMG volunteers to the food security solution are not fully described by numbers alone. To understand the full meaning of these numbers and the activities that support them, the Impact Evaluation Task Force was appointed by the EMG National Committee. First-year efforts included development of evaluation tools and establishment of collection methods to set the stage for the first data collection. While it is apparent that EMG volunteers are changing local food streams, forming strategic collaborations, and making monumental efforts for addressing food insecurity, key process challenges, including decentralized EMG program management and burden of data collection, complicate the measurement of true impact. Realizing that the development of quality measures takes time, the task force team has reviewed the first round of data to improve data collection and is preparing state and local coordinators for the second data collection in late 2018.