News

Louisa County ELC Addresses Community Needs

Today, the Louisa County Extension Leadership Council (ELC) is a strong and effective group of volunteers intent on supporting the programs of the Louisa County Extension staff and serving their community. A couple of years ago, however, the ELC was suffering from a lack of members, having dwindled to only a few active participants.

When Jenny Thompson, Extension 4-H youth development agent and unit coordinator, and Charles Rosson, Extension agriculture and natural resources agent, discovered that the departure of three 20-plus year veteran agents from their office had negatively impacted their ELC, they got to work on revitalizing the group.

“We needed to establish new contacts among the stakeholders in our community,” says Rosson, “We wanted to earn the respect of community members and get them involved in our programs.”

Thompson and Rosson encouraged members of the existing ELC to look at its role as an ELC and how they functioned as a group. They reviewed their county situation analysis and learned that aging, elder care, and estate planning were high priority issues in their community. In response, they voted to organize a day-long seminar targeted to people age 50 and above that would help to increase awareness of the resources available in the county on aging topics and also to increase awareness of VCE.

“Deciding to address this specific need of the community really helped galvanize and re-invigorate our ELC,” says Thompson. “It gave them a sense of purpose, and helped recruit new members to the ELC because of the need for people to work on this project.”

More than 65 people participated in the event where they learned about estate planning, Alzheimer’s disease, fraud and scams, and elder abuse, among other topics. ELC members contacted speakers, lined up vendors, applied for grant funding, helped set up and run the event, and taught sessions.

“One of our Board of Supervisors members attended the event,” adds Thompson. “We realized that our ELC was helping VCE make positive strides in our community when he was so impressed that he told another supervisor all about Extension and our programs.”