Urban Affairs & New Nontraditional Programs

Representing the sixth base program area of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, the Urban Affairs and New Nontraditional Programs Unit provides knowledge, information, innovative programming, and other educational services to Alabama's citizens. Programs are designed to focus on the needs of the State's growing urban population. Educational training and services are planned and delivered based on assessed and prioritized needs.

The agenda of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's Urban Affairs and New Nontraditional Programs Unit is to provide learning opportunities to meet the needs of all urban and nontraditional audiences. Urban programs are designed to have a direct impact on family, environmental, social, economic and agricultural issues or affairs in densely populated areas. The urban Extension audience consists of people with needs unique to their environment and urban Extension programs may utilize all Extension base program areas in addressing those needs, but more often may open new areas of work.

Nontraditional programs are pioneering, contemporary programs and practices that reflect unique and futuristic methods of design, construction and implementation, which open new vistas for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and expand the outreach of the System to more fully serve all the people of Alabama. Such programs and practices most often may not fit within the categories of traditional Alabama Cooperative Extension System programs and audiences. However, such programs involve new areas of interests, clientele, and delivery techniques within the System's traditional base programs (New Horizons: Urban Affairs and New Nontraditional Programs Concept Paper, 1997).

Goals:

• Create a greater appreciation for the value of diversity
• Strengthen the resiliency of individuals, youth and families by enhancing coping and survival skills of citizens in Alabama's urban communities
• Build new supportive institutions, groups, and teams that allow families to exercise their power to shape their own communities
• Facilitate changes to improve urban environments and reduce the impact of environmental situations which threaten the safety and health of individuals, youth and families
• Employ an expended conceptual understanding of Urban Agriculture to develop programming that addresses real issues of urban/rural interdependence
• Create expanded access to public information through independent systems for information referral and retrieval

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