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Community Information

Name

Tucson Village Farm’s 4-H Healthy Living Center

Location

4210 N. Campbell Ave. Tucson, AZ 85719

Outcome

Teen

Geographical Type

Town/City

Organizations

6

Market Statement

Program Implementation

The Tucson site continued with monthly produce distribution events, routinely distributing about 160 boxes weighing up to 60lbs of fresh produce. Compared to our first event, we are reaching more families with children in the home (47% in Fall 2023, compared to 65% in Fall 2024). Twenty percent of families picking up produce received food assistance benefits (i.e., SNAP) as of Fall 2024. We are succeeding in reaching families from our target ZIP codes, with nearly 30% of families reporting coming from 85719 and 85705. We engaged adult and youth volunteers, including 4-H Healthy Living Ambassadors, to host these events. We have been ironing out initial kinks in program expansion, and the multi-site team continues to meet monthly via Zoom; these meetings include partners and the evaluation team as well. In terms of initiating the FARMacy Facilitator program, we laid the groundwork for early 2025 recruitment and training, and developed the youth evaluation tools. Since we haven’t yet commenced the teen programming, we do not yet have results to report. We also prepared and submitted a GusNIP application to support the sustainability of the program.

Community Integration

We started this project with a robust community advisory group, including physicians at El Rio Community Health Center (our local Federally Qualified Health Center), UA’s Compost Cats, SNAP-Ed educators, UA’s Culinary Medicine program, and others who supported our application with letters of support. Our CYFAR team meetings have been open to, and attended by, a variety of these partners who are not directly funded through this grant. Thus far, they’ve provided input on our programming and data collection instruments. Compost Cats, SNAP-Ed, and Culinary Medicine also provided education at the produce pick-up event and shared promotional materials for their other programs. We also have a number of community partners that are included on all of our communications, with the goal of engaging the communities they work with in our program. This includes the Southern Arizona Network for Down Syndrome, the University of Arizona Sonoran Center for Excellence in Disabilities, and the Flowing Wells School District, among others. In addition, we have done broad outreach to engage community members as volunteers to help with running the produce pick-up events.

Technology Integration

To promote our event, we used the Tucson Village Farm digital newsletter which has a distribution list, which grew from about 6,000 people to 7,300 subscribers in the last year. We also posted about the event on social media, including Facebook and Instagram. Our Facebook posts reached an average of 2,000 individuals and our Instagram posts reached about 35,000 on average. Our most popular Market on the Move post had 127,000 views. We’ve also used technology at our events to capture evaluation data and encourage engagement in additional programming. QR codes were provided for individuals interested in completing our stakeholder survey on their phone and for individuals to learn more about the Dining with Diabetes program hosted by the Culinary Medicine Program. To foster greater collaboration, particularly across our two communities in the Phoenix and Tucson areas, we also hold monthly Zoom meetings with our full team to plan upcoming events and share resources.

Sustaining

Tucson Village Farm is a long-standing organization with broad-based university and community support. We have a history of leveraging federal funding into sustainable programs; e.g., our current 4-H Healthy Living Ambassador (HLA) program for teens was initiated with a USDA NIFA CYFAR grant in 2012. While much of the community is aware of TVF, not everyone is aware, and those that are may not know about its affiliation with Cooperative Extension, 4-H, and youth development programming. Market on the Move also has a wide and diverse audience, so bringing people who know about Market on the Move to TVF for distribution events with education hosted by HLA youth is a promising step towards getting a wider part of the Tucson community to understand what we do. The initial MOTM events in Tucson have been extremely well-attended, and through our visitor surveys, we’re learning that many participants in these events did not have prior familiarity with TVF. Through these formative surveys, we also gathered information about what topics people would be interested in learning about in the future to ensure that we are relevant and providing the community with valued information. Another aspect of sustainability is having adequate human resources. All new positions associated with this funding have been filled. We also have a current pool of nearly 200 HLAs ages 12-18 who could be trained in the FARMacy curriculum this fall and implement it at these community events. We also applied for a GusNIP grant for a project to complement the work done through this program which would further support the TVF team in promoting healthy nutrition and engaging youth leaders.

Form A - Age Group by Ethnicity and Race

	Pre-K	K-6	Youth (Grades 7-12)	Parents
Total Participants	0	0	0	0
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino	0	0	0	0
Not Hispanic or Latino	0	0	0	0
Race
White	0	0	0	0
Black or African-American	0	0	0	0
American Indian or Alaska Native	0	0	0	0
Asian	0	0	0	0
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander	0	0	0	0
Persons indicating more than one race	0	0	0	0

Form B - Poverty Risk Factor

Total Number of Children Pre K: 0

Percent in Poverty: 0.00%

Total Number of Children K - 6: 0

Percent in Poverty: 0.00%

Total Number Youth Grade 7 - 12: 0

Percent in Poverty: 0.00%

Form C - Staff and Volunteers by Ethnicity/Race

	Extension Staff (FTE's)	Other Paid CYFAR Project Staff (FTE's)	Youth Volunteers	Adult Volunteers
Total Participants	4.00	0.00	10.00	20.00
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino	3.00	0.00	4.00	2.00
Not Hispanic or Latino	1.00	0.00	6.00	17.00
Race
White	3.00	0.00	8.00	16.00
Black or African-American	0.00	0.00	1.00	1.00
American Indian or Alaska Native	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Asian	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Persons indicating more than one race	0.00	0.00	1.00	2.00

Approximate hours contributed by Adult Volunteers: 63.00

Approximate hours contributed by Youth Volunteers:30.00

Form D - Computers and Technology

Computers at all sites funded through sources other than CYFAR: 0

Form E - Youth Delivery Methods and Program Contents

Form F - Adult Delivery Methods and Program Contents

Form G - 4-H Clubs

Total Number of Clubs: 0

Total Number of Children K - 6: 0

Total Number of Youth Grades 7 - 12: 0

Total Number of Youth Volunteers 0

Total Number of Adult Volunteers 0