Lessons Learned from the Development of the North Carolina Extension Master Food Volunteer Program

Abstract

This article describes the curriculum and program development process that was used to create the North Carolina Extension Master Food Volunteer program. We used a rigorous program development process, including conducting a needs assessment, piloting and evaluating the program, incorporating revisions based on feedback, and receiving external reviews that were incorporated into the final product. We provide lessons learned and best practices for others to follow. These include the importance of piloting the program, involving agents and key partners throughout the entire process, and providing flexibility and adaptability in program delivery. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Volunteers play an important role in delivering Extension programs in their local communities. In particular, Extension professionals across the country have developed structured master volunteer programs to engage, train, and prepare community members to support and expand family and consumer sciences (FCS) programming. Examples of such programs can be found in Table 1. Existing research on these programs is focused on analyzing behavioral outcomes of volunteers related to healthy living (Washburn et al., 2017). There is limited research that explores the process of developing a structured volunteer program within the Extension context, including the steps taken and lessons learned to inform future volunteer program development. While one study describes the curriculum development process within the context of the Virginia Tech Master Food Volunteer Program (Jiles et al., 2019), it focuses on one continuing education module rather than the entire program. We address this gap by describing the development process and lessons learned from the North Carolina Extension Master Food Volunteer (NC EMFV) program pilot. NC EMFV PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Specialists at North Carolina State University (NC State) first learned of the master food volunteer program model in 2014 from the program manager for the Virginia Tech Master Food Volunteer Program. Table 2 summarizes the subsequent program development process we followed to adapt this program for North Carolina. We originally selected and trained eight agents in the NC EMFV program pilot. One agent dropped out due to challenges in recruiting volunteers, and two agents were unable to complete volunteer training before the end of the pilot’s first year due to personal reasons. As a result, some evaluation activities included seven agents (for example, individual interviews after the agents finished training), while other activities included only those who were able to pilot the program for an entire year (for example, focus groups with volunteers). Interviews with agents provided valuable feedback that we then incorporated into the curriculum. The curriculum originally included PowerPoint presentations with scripts, activities, and handouts for each section, plus video content for certain sections. Agent feedback indicated that the curriculum needed to include more opportunities for hands-on learning. We made many changes based on the agents’ feedback, and agents helped develop original content to address the gaps in content and delivery methods identified through the evaluation. Agents were included as coauthors to reflect these contributions. A summary of these changes is provided in Table 4.