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We Grow Durham County NC Cooperative Extension, Durham County Center

Spring 2022

We Grow Community

Durham County Cooperative Extension serves the community with programs that range from agriculture to parenting- and much in between. Listen as a few of our clients share their experiences taking part in the many opportunities we have to offer!

We Grow Teen Leaders

Teen Council hosted its regular winter social with a 4-H Family Movie Night where families were invited to a pizza dinner while enjoying the Pixar film Luca. A mix of 4-H youth and their parents from around Durham County attended the social where Teen Council members prepared and provided homemade hot chocolate, chai, and apple cider. Teen Council youth also provided a popcorn bar, where participants were able to decorate their popcorn with a variety of flavors and toppings. Mindful of COVID-19 restrictions, KN-95 masks were provided for all attendants while food and drink was consumed outdoors by propane heaters.

Teen Council members spoke to prospective and current members about their role as county ambassadors and the need for more youth to enroll in Teen Council in the following year. Teen Council members also shared examples of past work, opportunities for state programming, and how volunteering with Teen Council provided excellent documentation for job applications, college applications, and access to scholarship. Teen Council also advertised their partnership with Keep Durham Beautiful and plans to participate in Creek Week at a trash pick up at Sandy Creek Park.

Founded over 120 years ago, 4-H is one of the oldest youth organizations in the country. Furthermore, it is also one of the largest as it can be found in some form in every county of the U.S. Durham’s 4-H program includes low-cost summer camps, neighborhood clubs, school enrichment, and other community events.

Clubs like Teen Council host regular social events for prospective members as well as opportunities for youth of all ages to meet their peers from across Durham County’s diverse communities. Teen Council is a county-wide club that regularly represents Durham County 4-H through public events and community service, and is composed of members from other neighborhood clubs. The club is currently seeking new recruits for the 2022-2023 school year, and welcomes all Durham youth from 13-18.

'For more information about Teen Council or other 4-H programs, contact Mac Hulbert at gmhulber@ncsu.edu.

We Grow the Best Employees

After over 20 years of service to Durham County Cooperative Extension, Peggy Kernodle is retiring. Hear what her colleagues and partners have to say upon her retirement.

We Grow Safe Little Ones

In 2019, 608 child passengers age 12 and younger died in motor vehicle crashes and more than 91,000 were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash for whom restraint use was known, 38% were not buckled up. Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip. (CDC, 2022).

This is where Alfonso Blanco our very own in-house car seat technician comes into play. Alfonso is dedicated to making sure that Durham’s children are safely secured in their car seats/booster seats. You will find Alfonso checking cars on Fridays during our Giving Closet distribution, assisting families on how to properly secure their children, and scheduling families for more in-depth car seat safety workshops.

Alfonso holds one-on-one car seat safety classes for Welcome Baby Durham Families and seeing him presenting the class can only show you how serious he takes the issues of child passenger safety. Since July 1st, 2021, to April of this year Alfonso has helped distribute over 200 car seats to Durham families.

Call Alfonso at 919-560-0525 to register for the next car seat safety workshop and help keep your children safe.

We Grow Community Leadership

Durham County Cooperative Extension has a newly appointed Advisory Council. The 17 member group was recruited through staff recommendations and self-nominations and includes a diverse selection of Durhamites who have participated in each of our programs. The Council will help inform Cooperative Extension programs and practices to make sure that they are community-centered.

Cecily Hamilton, a Management Fellow in the County Manager’s office, provided consultation services to establish the council. “It's so valuable to have that community voice and have the community and residents who are subject matter experts in their own right and are actively involved in Cooperative Extension programming be involved in decision making and advise and advocate for the council or further for Cooperative Extension Services and programming.”

The first Advisory Council meeting took place virtually on February 16. Members had the opportunity to hear from each of the Cooperative Extension program areas and receive an orientation to the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Advisory Council model. Simultaneous Spanish language interpretation was available so that all members could participate equally.

Going forward, the Council will have the opportunity to inform Cooperative Extension policies and activities, while also representing the work of Extension in the community. “We are so excited to have our community members serve as an integral part of our work planning. We can’t wait to see what we will achieve together,” shared Donna Rewalt, County Extension Director, Durham County.

To see a full list of the advisory council participants, visit our website.

Volunteer Spotlight

Brandon Scarberry

Kids Voting Durham Board Member

Brandon Scarberry first came to Kids Voting Durham through the Carolina Summer of Service organized by his scholarship program at Duke University. After several weeks volunteering with Program Coordinator Carolyn Kreuger, he wasn’t ready to leave. He stayed on as a Youth Leadership Intern for the rest of the summer. Over a year later, Brandon is even more involved with Kids Voting Durham: he has joined the Kids Voting Durham Advisory Board, continues to volunteer in fundraising and in design of the 2022 candidate guide, and plans to return to support the summer internship program.

A native of a small town in the Rust Belt of southern Ohio, Brandon saw firsthand the importance of government in helping or hurting a community. “There was a lot of environmental degradation that just wasn’t dealt with,” he shared.

Kids Voting Durham made sense to Brandon as an organization with which to share his time and talent. “From an early age, I understood the importance of government, and I was grateful that I understood that as a young person, but I know fortunately not everyone has to see the things that I saw. I want to help people understand just how important government is but also help them understand how it actually works, because it's complicated, sometimes purposefully so.”

Brandon has also been able to connect with Kids Voting Durham’s work with educators because his mother is a teacher. He has loved creating materials that make the lives of teachers easier. “The idea that I could take just a little bit of stress off of the backs of a few teachers was really, really meaningful to me,” he said.

Guided by service, Brandon sees the work of Kids Voting Durham as particularly meaningful because of the program’s centering of youth voice. “I think the best thing about KVD is that we actually listen and take youth voices and use that to guide what we do rather than coming up with things on our own to do, and I think that, in essence, is what volunteering should be about.”

Employee Spotlight

Gaebryl Vives

Family & Consumer Sciences Assistant

Durham County Cooperative Extension’s newest employee, Gaebryl Vives, was pretty familiar with our organization when he joined the team in January of this year. Gaebryl has been a volunteer at our Briggs Avenue Community Garden since 2019. When the pandemic hit, he began spending more and more time at the garden, doing all he could to grow food for the Durham Tech Food Pantry and other places that were supplying food to our neighbors in need. This devotion to community won the recent Durham Technical Community College graduate that institution’s Campus Compact Student Engagement award.

By joining the Cooperative Extension team as the Family and Consumer Sciences Project Assistant, Gaebryl gets to continue his work at the Briggs Garden, while also managing our teaching kitchen, and serving as a program assistant for our Kids Voting Durham program during election season.

Gaebryl shares that his favorite part of the job is to, “be able to wake up on a Friday morning go out to the garden and work with community members, be able to meet all kinds of people working together for the common goal of having a wonderful garden in that community space.”

When he isn’t at work, Gaebryl enjoys hanging out with his two cats, Onion and Gunther, reading, listening to music, playing video games, and of course, gardening.

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North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Durham County Center 721 Foster Street, Durham, NC 27701* (919) 560-0525

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Christa Gibson
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