Virginia Cooperative Extension

Description

Building on the strength of our agriculture, natural resource, family and community heritage, we enable people to shape their futures through research based educational programs. Recognizing that knowledge is power, we serve people where they live and work. Audiences are involved in designing, implementing and evaluating needs-driven programs. We are a dynamic organization which stimulates positive personal and societal change leading to more productive lives, families, farms, and forests, as well as a better environment in urban and rural communities.

Our vision is:

• To help clientele improve their lives.
• To use a systems approach to programming, with task-oriented work teams that respond to the needs of individuals, groups and organizations.
• To provide residents prompt access to information and programs through an innovative human and technological system.
• To work with the disenfranchised and underserved who need special attention by targeting certain of our resources to programs for low-income groups, those outside the dominant culture, dysfunctional families, limited-resource farmers, at-risk youth and others.
• To fully integrate a culturally diverse paid and volunteer staff in planning, implementing and evaluating programs.
• To collaborate with public and private partners to better utilize our resources, heighten our impact and reach a more diverse audience.
• To capitalize on the respective strengths of Virginia State and Virginia Tech as partners in supporting the extension mission.
• To recruit, manage and reward faculty, support, and volunteer staff to reflect each person's uniqueness and value.
• To have an open and positive administrative environment, based on shared leadership that maintains organizational integrity while providing opportunities for all staff members to fully realize their potential.
• To minimize administrative costs and direct our resources to educational programming.