Annual Report

The Virginia Cooperative Extension is a state agency and is administered out of Virginia's land-grant universities, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University. Extension responds to the needs of individuals, families, groups, and organizations with educational programs in the the broad areas of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Family and Consumer Sciences, 4-H Youth Development and Community Viability.

Some highlights for fiscal year 2020 include:

• 118 York/Poquoson Master Gardeners contributed 6,931 hours with an economic value of $197,256 and 139 Peninsula Virginia Master Naturalists contributed over 6,856 hours with an economic value of $195,121 of volunteer service to Virginia Cooperative Extension through teaching educational classes and workshops, responding to horticultural questions, developing educational materials, and other activities that extend the services of the unit office.
• Starting in 2016, the Master Gardeners and Master Naturalists combined collected 2,000 lbs. of plastic bags and film each year keeping plastics out of our landfill and environment.
• In 2019, 177 youth participated in a week-long residential 4-H camp at the Jamestown 4-H Educational Center. The leadership team for this camp included 31 York County teen counselors and 12 York County adults who resided at the Center all week. 22 additional adult volunteers and Master Gardeners served as instructors or helped with administrative duties, including camp registration. Additionally,
  the 4-H Patriot's Shooting Club serviced an additional 35 youth in York and Poquoson.  In 2020, 4-H Junior Summer Camp was cancelled across the state due to COVID-19.
• The gained economic value to our community is derived from the citizen volunteers that gained improved knowledge and skills toward reducing their impact on the local environment, while improving their knowledge of the local community thus building community capacity.