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We Grow Durham County NC Cooperative Extension, Durham County Center

Winter 2021

We Grow Appreciation

An estimated 37,000 people in Durham County don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Each week, emergency food providers, mostly volunteers, distribute food to thousands of Durham County’s most vulnerable residents. These unsung heroes of the community work tirelessly to support their neighbors.

To honor the work of these community organizations, City/County staff, and other community members, Durham County’s Food Security office hosted an in-person reflection and celebration on November 12, 2021 at Briggs Community Garden.

The meeting welcome was provided by Durham County Commissioner Chair, Brenda Howerton. Community members from End Hunger Durham, Food My Sheep, Iglesia Presbiteriana Emanuel, and Root Causes shared about their experiences with food security during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meeting attendees shared food and fellowship. We appreciate all that attended and missed those that were not able to stop by.

We Grow New Gardeners

The Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County are proud to welcome the 2021 class of new Master Gardeners! 27 students completed the 16 week training, learning about topics from soil health to the value of native plants. Our newly-minted interns will continue their training over the coming year by providing gardening and landscape education and outreach across the county. Get your gardening questions answered, or learn how to serve your community as a Master Gardener, by emailing mastergardener@dconc.gov.

We Grow Healthy Early Childhoods

Durham County has released our Early Childhood Action Plan! Over the past 18 months, Durham County Cooperative Extension staff, the Durham Children’s initiative, and over 150 community members have worked together to develop recommendations about how to make things better for Durham families with young children. Parents, front-line workers, community-rooted leaders, and nonprofit & systems leaders with lived experience and expertise across our maternal &child health, early care & education, and family support systems came together, built relationships, and shared their experiences. The plan is informed by the voices of over 1,000 additional parents and early childhood providers.

We need this plan because not every child has the same opportunities to thrive in Durham. We believe everyone deserves to grow up healthy and safe in nurturing communities where they can play, learn, and succeed. To address the persistent disparities in early childhood outcomes in Durham, our plan focuses on the following goals:

• Value the voices and experiences of families in our community

• Address root causes like poverty and racism to prevent acute stress and trauma for families

• Ensure there is a set of universal, family and child-focused supports that promote thriving for all

• Ensure there is a set of culturally-affirming, anti-racist, affordable supports that address family stress and trauma

• Change harmful mental models that that prevent systems from changing in necessary ways

• Build intentional collaboration across different parts of our system so that our whole system will be stronger

We don’t want this plan to sit on a shelf. A representative group of 36 people is serving as our first steering committee. By design, each of these groups holds a majority in the steering committee: parents of young children, people of color, long-term Durhamites, and people with lived experience with challenges in our early childhood systems. The steering committee is learning together how to share power, center the voices of the people most affected by challenges in our early childhood systems, and is making decisions about which strategies we will implement first. The ECAP planning team is so excited to be learning from this incredible group of leaders, and we can’t wait to share their priorities for action and funding for 2022.

To learn more, you can explore the plan in English and Spanish at this website—it includes videos explaining different parts of the plan, data, parent and provider quotes, and detailed action plans.

We Grow Kid Voters

This past fall, when kids cast their Kids Voting Durham ballot for Durham Mayor and City Council., they could do so while visiting two of their local library branches. Durham County Main and North Regional libraries offered Kids Voting to its patrons and those who were coming to vote with their parents to Early Voting and on Election Day.

Scott Frawley, Children’s Services Manager at North Regional Library, shared that hosting kids voting was a treat for library staff and patrons alike. “The 'voting booth' was a fun conversation starter for staff to engage with visiting families and teens. Plus, it was an effective and inventive way to share elections information with youth while adults also cast their ballots at North Regional.”

To further integrate Kids Voting Durham activities into the libraries mission, Anna Cromwell, Children’s Librarian, at the Main Library, created a list of books on voting experience. Both sites offered take-home voting activities and information from Kids Voting Durham. The library’s mascot Poly even got in on the action encouraging youth at both libraries to voice their vote! In addition to offering KVD to their own patrons, Main Library took voting on the road to other youth programs when they did off-site library programs.

Anna Cromwell, Children’s Services Manager for Main Library, was enthusiastic about the partnership with Kids Voting Durham, which she hopes to continue and grow for future elections. “Kids and adults, alike, love the Kids Voting Durham Program! Through activity sheets, reading lists, and an actual simulation of the process, children are introduced to the sacred privilege of voting. The program sparks an interest in democracy and promotes civic engagement, laying the foundation for good citizenship. Kids need to know the power of voting; as it will one day serve as their opportunity for input, to be heard, and to make a difference. A single vote, their vote, can make a difference. As a librarian, I believe there is only one thing comparable to a “lifelong reader" and that is a “lifelong voter,” they both have the power to change the world.”

Look for continued partnership activities with Kids Voting Durham and the DCo Libraries in the 2022 Durham School Board Election and beyond!

Main Librarian Laurel Jones helps a young voter cast their ballot.

We Grow Warmth

The Welcome Baby team would like to give a heartfelt thank you to all the organizations that continue to support our annual coat drive. Through the generosity of all those who donated new and gently used children’s coats we were able to collect 395 coats for our tenth annual drive.

We send a special thank you to the Durham County Library for providing community drop-off locations. Big thanks also go to White Rock Baptist Church, Holy Infant Catholic Church, (HICC), PORCH Durham, Mrs. Gayle Harris and the Ebonnettes Service Club Inc, Bright Horizons (4 UNC TV Dr) and all of our individual donors and Durham families.

Volunteer Spotlight

Deborah Pilkington

Extension Master Gardener Volunteer

When Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Deborah Pilkington first came to Durham in 1985, she knew, in her own words, “close to zero about gardening”. But she knew what she liked. The abundant vegetation in North Carolina was a sharp contrast from what she’d known in her native Canada and in Illinois, where she’d lived since immigrating to the US. “My first spring in North Carolina, I almost had a car accident! I couldn’t believe everything that was blooming and so gorgeous!”

Moving from ‘novice’ to ‘master’ gardener has been a slow process of love for Deborah. After beginning by asking a lot of questions at landscaping companies and garden centers, she earned a Home Horticulture certificate through Sara P. Duke Gardens education program. She then moved into Durham County’s Extension Master Gardener Volunteer certification program, which she finished in 2015. Becoming an Extension Master Gardener Volunteer inspired her beyond what she’d originally anticipated. She started her own gardening company, the Mini Gardener, which she ran for five years using her Mini Cooper car as her business vehicle. “If I needed more than I could fit into my Mini Cooper to do a job, then I knew the job was too big for me.”

Now a full-time Extension Master Gardener Volunteer with a special expertise in native plants and ecology, Deborah shares her skills with the Durham Community through education and beautification work.

In 2020, she spearheaded the creation of a special garden at Orchard Park for the Durham Parks and Recreation’s Walltown Mature Adult program. The goals of the garden were twofold—to create a place where participants could draw, sketch and photograph, and to teach participants how they could create a similar garden at their own homes. The first time that Deborah saw a group from the program sitting outside with easels painting the flowers that were planted she said that “My heart just about burst out of my chest… It was so touching.”

Most recently, Deborah led in the creation revitalization of a beautiful urban container garden outside of the Geer Street Cocoa Cinnamon café location. Deborah considers the street-side garden an amazing educational opportunity for our community. “If we can take the hot, exposed, dry, really tough growing conditions in this urban environment and create an oasis, then we can teach other people to do that with other hot dry urban growing environments in Durham,” she shared of her vision for the project.

It is amazing to think that someone who knew so little about gardening now has the expertise and vision to transform so many parts of our community into such beautiful, healthy spaces. Durham County Cooperative Extension, and all of Durham, are lucky to have volunteers as passionate, focused, and hard-working as Deborah Pilkington.

Employee Spotlight

Tommy Hernandez

EFNEP Youth Educator

Durham County Cooperative Extension welcomes Tommy Hernandez, our new Youth Program Assistant for Extension’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP ). Tommy’s role, which is new to Durham County, is to help children and young people learn to eat healthier using a variety of fun, evidence-based curricula. As a first generation Mexican-American Tommy is also bilingual, so his work will extend into both the English and Spanish speaking communities in Durham County.

Tommy’s passion for healthy living is evident in his favorite hobbies: lifting weights, jogging, and playing guitar; as well as in his academic training. He graduated in the Fall of 2020 from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in Nutrition. Tommy shares that he is, “always striving to be the best version of myself, for my future wife and kids, my family, and friends.”

He is also passionate about helping people, and especially youth. “I enjoy being a role model to the youth, I believe everyone has the potential to accomplish whatever it is they want to do. Everyone just needs that person that to encourage them. I am so excited to be able to teach youth life skills so that they can thrive, not only in their adolescent years, but in their adult lives too!”

Schools, community centers, and summer camps interested in having Tommy provide nutrition education to their youth groups should reach out to him at tomhernandez@dconc.gov.

NC State University and N.C. A&T State University commit themselves to positive action to secure equal opportunity and prohibit discrimination and harassment regardless of age, color, disability, family and marital status, genetic information, national origin, political beliefs, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity, sexual orientation and veteran status. NC State, N.C. A&T, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments cooperating.

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

Created By
Christa Gibson
Appreciate

Credits:

Created with images by congerdesign - "cookies walnuts cinnamon sticks" • jag2020 - "seedling gardening greenhouse"