GSO Conference Call – February 25, 2011

Elizabeth Malayter

Sally Causey

Jack Beckford

Jenny Dorgan

Kellie Johnston

Tracy Nolan – Red Bird Mission

Gretchen Schirmer

Barbara Shipman

Cheryl Peterson

Project Updates

  • Jack Beckford – no new news to report. Farm market planning in New Albany continues.
  • Elizabeth - New food service director for Knox County School System. Trying to budget for fresh foods. Wants farmer demonstrators in schools and unique vegetables. School will be used as a demonstration project.
  • Sally Causey – Working in Greenville re food security and barriers. Hosts food security task force. Will hold a meeting for elected officials, hospitals, businesses to map assets which will lead into a campaign to encourage eating local, healthy food to combat obesity/diabetes etc.
  • Barbara Shipman – Working on expanding school gardens into small community botanical gardens. Will install outdoor classroom with benches. Will also expand the after school service learning program. Looking on expanding to other schools. Working with Junior Master Gardeners to teach science/math. Students are able to eat their own produce.
  • Tracy Nolan – Met yesterday with Appalachian Community Garden and Food Security Project. Focus is on farmers market, community gardens with seven partners. Met with group that has successfully implemented EBT into their program. Red Bird looking to replicate. Group wanting to utilize greenhouse in exchange for providing plants and instructional DVDs on gardening and cooking fresh foods. Hosted training last Thursday.
  • Jenny Dorgan – Working on capacity building for ASAN (financial management and procedures.) Working with Land Grant institutions to convene meeting in Nov to bring together food/farms with goal to identify key critical challenges. Called Food & Farm Agenda. Met with State Health Dept and Farmers Market Authority to utilize EBT. Has farmer templates to assist in marketing local projects. Working with Food Bank in North Alabama on institutional purchasing (maybe Huntsville Hospital.)
  • Eunika Rogers-Sipp – Working on stakeholder engagement with community based tourism which has led to demonstration in March on community based tourism. Installing solar powered irrigation and working to expand the program through application of federal grant funding.
  • Cheryl Peterson – Continuing to provide technical assistance to several groups to establish community gardens. Assisting with the implementation of mini-grants. Interns are working on Spring planting. Working with growers to establish markets for products in local restaurants.

Final Gathering

Budget: This week, Gretchen has talked with most GSOs regarding their budget. A draft budget for Final Gathering is available. Gretchen reviewed the draft budget. Gretchen is confident that we have available funds to meet. Assumes pulling in unused funds from Peer to Peer and other budget items. Still some flexibility in the budgets.

Evaluation: Meeting will cover report of Evaluation.

Meeting Dates: Group confirmed that May 16th would be OK. Logistics from the airport was discussed.

Agenda: (Committee to put Agenda together. Headed by Cheryl assisted by Barbara, Gretchen, John.) Agenda suggestions include:

  • GSO Project Success Stories
  • Evaluation Results
  • Next Steps – Facilitation (Benefits of continuing GSO Partnerships.)
  • Future projects and steps of actions.
  • Fundraising Committee
  • Dr. Connely & Dr. Dagger from Alcorn University regarding group grant
  • Technology training (i.e. Skype.)

Committee will talk and have a draft at the next conference call.

Other – Future Cooperation

Quarterly conference calls were suggested.

NEXT GSO CONFERENCE CALL

March 25th 10am EST, 9am CST