Using Community Assessments to Reach and Teach By Dr. Jannie Carter

Both urban and rural environments offer particular challenges in responding to hard-to-reach audiences. However, the difficulty experienced in reaching certain citizens does not alter Extension's professional responsibilities to them. Effective programming involves knowing the customers, their communities and concerns, and then framing successful outreach approaches. The key is to make program delivery responsive to the customer. Accurate community profiles are powerful tools for generating information needed to reach citizens with the greatest needs and to reach them where they live.

Community assessments provide information to support crucial program planning decisions. Databases compiled from carefully structured assessments can lend support to program prioritization and provide benchmark data for follow-up evaluations and impact reporting. Moreover, community assessments can provide insight to particular cultural, social and economic concerns of under-served audiences that may need to be pursued.

Community assessments provide a basis for analyzing situations the way they are and for drawing accurate conclusions about how they can be improved. Assessments are beneficial to educators in a number of ways including: 1) determining real needs; 2) helping to determine program content to address the needs; 3) making decisions about what types of training or instructional methods to use; 4) determining the targeted audiences; 5) looking at outcomes to assess the situation before and after; and 6) making decisions about the next step.

Orchestrating a good community assessment involves:

• Organizing and training a competent assessment team
• Designing or adapting a valid survey instrument that evokes honest responses
• Selecting a sample from the population
• Outlining a distribution, data collection and analysis schedule
• Conducting the survey
• Analyzing and summarizing data to use as indicators of program needs

When using assessments to better serve hard-to-reach audiences, Extension educators should seek to:

• Know the customers and the communities in which they live
• Promote good relationships and encourage leaders and citizens to share their needs, goals and operations
• Take the time required to plan and implement innovative responses
• Rely heavily on the audience to define how, when and what we do with them rather than for them
• Design follow-up programs that are client centered, comprehensive, community based, and collaborative
• Involve community leaders and industry during the planning and assessment phase, to promote better coordination of program efforts

Effective outreach to hard-to-reach audiences involves:

• Communicating through written/oral messages that are timely and informative
• Using informal communication outlets such as schools, community centers, associations, and groups
• Being available for special community events
• Carrying messages that are short, to the point and graphic to bridge cultural barriers
• Being able to relate to the experiences of those you are trying to reach
• Having face-to-face contacts with the audience and community leaders
• Identifying community networks and building linkages
• Offering hands-on experiences
• Adapting and replicating successful models and exploring new and creative approaches
• Designing, promoting and implementing training to prepare staff to work effectively with hard-to-reach audiences

References

Unlocking the barriers: Keys to communicating with under-served customers. (March 1998). United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Communications, Office of Outreach

Schuchardt, J., and Baugher, S., (Nov. 1992). Extension family programs in a new era: 10 critical questions. Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Reaching limited resource audiences. (April, 1991). A Report of the Limited Resource Audiences Committee, Cooperative Extension System.