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3. 2021 BFRDP Project Director Meeting

Developing visually-based resources for refugee and other beginning farmers

Katie Painter and Hugh Joseph

Summary

Thousands of refugee beginning farming have participated in 50+ refugee farming incubator projects (RFIPs) nationwide to build small farm operations. As these farmers are mostly beginning English language learners, mainstream materials in written or spoken English are impractical as educational resources and leave RFIPs with few tools to offer their audiences for training and technical assistance (T&TA).
In response, ISED Solutions, a national refugee- and immigrant-serving organization, is collaborating with several RFIPs to develop audience-appropriate T&TA tools. We are building our photographic, visual literacy, Plain Language, and adult education skills through training-of-trainers meetings with content specialists, and applying these to development of unique instructional products. Support comes via 2501 and BFRDP ET funding.
In combination, we are producing over 200 instructional photo series, short videos, posters and other training products on a variety of farming topics, to be used by these collaborators, by other programs serving new American producers, and/or by other beginning farmers. In addition, we are creating a photo bank with thousands to freely-available images that can also be accessed by any beginning farmer program for T&TA.
This presentation will address why these tools are so valuable for many diverse beginning farmers, and how they improve content comprehension and overall appeal. We will provide an overview of these resources and include examples of the photo series and videos.

Details

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