1. Printing: This poster is 48” wide by 36” high. It’s designed to be printed on a large-format printer. Customizing the Content: The placeholders in this poster are formatted for you. Type in the placeholders to add text, or click an icon to add a table, chart, SmartArt graphic, picture or multimedia file. To add or remove bullet points from text, just click the Bullets button on the Home tab. If you need more placeholders for titles, content or body text, just make a copy of what you need and drag it into place. PowerPoint’s Smart Guides will help you align it with everything else. Want to use your own pictures instead of ours? No problem! Just right-click a picture and choose Change Picture. Maintain the proportion of pictures as you resize by dragging a corner. Interconnecting Community Through the Internet Dorothy Baker, class of 2015, texas@vt.edu Environmental Policy and Planning/Agriculture Science Civic Agriculture and Food Systems Minor Crop and Soil Environmental Science Minor BACKGROUND The Hale Y Community Garden in Blacksburg, VA is a vibrate community dedicated to growing healthy food. The garden community includes 72 plot renters along with their families, the Civic Agriculture minor at Virginia Tech, the local YMCA, and the extended Blacksburg gardening community who participate in programs at the Hale Y garden. The Hale Y Garden has also partnered with several local food organizations to further the local food movement. With such a large, diverse group of people, communication is essential. Although the garden has an active community, there is a need for a proficient, accessible online method of commination to facilitate ideas and distribute information among the gardeners. OBJECTIVES 1.Organize information into a readable, easy-to-use format 2.Create a communication system for the Hale Y Garden and the Blacksburg Community 3.Create an on-line filing system for the Garden Coordinator 4.“Go-Live” with the new and improved website IMPACTS ON COMMUNITY TIME LINE/EVOLUTION OF WEBSITE Increase communication among the Hale Y gardeners Increase the presence of the garden online Collection of resource for garden participants Spread of education about community gardens to a wider audience Jenny Swanke Hale Y Community Garden Coordinator YMCA CHALLENGE SUMMARY OF PROJECT CAPSTONE SUSTAINABILITY This project has taught me the importance of looking at the holistic view agriculture. Knowing how to seed, grow, and harvest produce is extremely important. However, it is also important to know how to communicate agriculture to other people and to educate the importance of food systems, the local food movement, and sustainable practices. The Hale Y Community Garden is a web of interlocking forces that brings the community closer together, and the website helps facilitate this process. COMMUNITY PARTNER The website is deigned to be a tool that the garden can use to further its goals, in the same way a shovel or rake help cultivate food. I created the website using Wordpress, a free, on-line website builder to facilitate communication among gardeners, and Blacksburg community. This project compliments the already existing kiosks at the garden, and the Facebook page. Members of the garden will now be able to find resources, learn about about up-coming events, and ask questions. The website also helps the Garden Coordinator to give out information without inundating the gardeners email. The greatest challenge of the project was learning to work Wordpress. This process was the first time I had ever designed a website, and there was a learning curve to use the tools and become comfortable with the site. NEW WEBSITE ORIGINAL WEBPAGE Core Value: Authentic Community Investment CONTACT INFORMATION