Hot Stuff, Summer 2001
- New Mexico Works works! (Summer 2001)
- Sharing and caring after school with 4-H (Summer 2001)
- Kids, Cows and More (Summer 2001)
- Getting Connected (Summer 2001)
New Mexico Works works!
 |
|
| Court career: Lourdes Lara looks over court documents with Municipal Judge Melissa Miller-Byrnes. Lara chose to do New Mexico Works job training as a volunteer at Las Cruces Municipal Court and now is a full-time court records and file clerk. |
In 1993, Lourdes Lara set out to rebuild her life. She left an abusive husband and moved to Las Cruces with six children and few job options.
The women's shelter that housed her family hired her part-time to assist and peer counsel other residents. Welfare benefits helped her make ends meet.
Lara slowly gained her independence and moved her family to rent-assisted housing. After many years of living in fear, things were looking up. Then disaster struck. As the children walked to meet her after work one day, Lara's 5 year-old son, Jesse, was struck and killed by a drunk driver.
Lara kept her sanity by working to implement tougher drunk-driving laws in New Mexico. She became a member of Las Cruces' Victim's Impact Panel and spent a lot of time volunteering in municipal court. Then, in 1997, the state implemented New Mexico Works, a welfare-to-work program designed to help welfare recipients become self-sufficient.
The program required Lara to either start school or job training to keep her benefits.
"I decided what better place than municipal court to job train? So I volunteered there for six months as a file clerk," Lara says. "I had to put in 24 hours of work each week to continue receiving cash assistance."
After six months, the court hired her full-time as a records and file clerk. Today, she owns her own home. She credits municipal court and New Mexico Works for contributing to her success.
New Mexico Works is administered by NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service in the state's southwest quadrant, encompassing nine counties: Catron, Doña Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Luna, Otero, Sierra and Socorro.
Between September 1998 and December 2000, more than 10,000 individuals were assessed and almost half were placed in jobs through the program. The other 5,000 participants were placed in approved work activities to prepare for employment.
"These activities include education, training, work experience, community service, and life and employment skill classes," says Sandra Corriveau, program associate director. "Our region is the best in the state, so we're doing a good job with the program, transitioning people into the work force." The region leads the state in percentage of participants employed and number of job openings available.
Corriveau says participating employers have made the program successful. Employers can receive wage subsidies and work opportunity tax credits when they hire New Mexico Works participants who, in return, gain on-the-job training.
Corriveau says a large number of participants grew up in families where there was no encouragement for setting goals and getting ahead.
"Teaching work ethics is very valuable to participants," she says. "We also help them with support services, such as child care and transportation. It's essential for people to realize they can be successful."
Helping participants succeed offers them the opportunity to influence their own children in a positive way.
"I encourage my kids as much as possible. I tell them to better themselves by taking advantage of the opportunities available to them," Lara says. "I want to be their role model. I want my kids to say, "Well, mom did it with six kids, I can do it.'"
Sharing and caring after school with 4-H
 |
| Growing with 4-H: Justin Trager, a 4-H Share/Care coordinator, consults with Joseph Sanchez in a garden they helped plant at the César Chávez Community Center in Albuquerque. |
Hundreds of kids in Albuquerque's low-income neighborhoods of La Mesa and Trumbull Village have been planting flower gardens and vegetable patches on school grounds and at community centers-a new experience for most of the city kids involved.
Across the state in rural Cibola County, about 200 kids-including Navajo, Laguna and other pueblo children-are learning archery techniques. Many also have visited the Cibola National Forest on "nature hunts" to learn about natural resources.
And in Rio Arriba County, kids are learning breathing techniques and other stress-control exercises in between arts and crafts workshops.
The kids from all three areas have something in common-they're learning to say "no" to drugs and alcohol but "yes" to community spirit and teamwork through new 4-H after-school programs for kids in at-risk areas.
"We are providing opportunities for children in communities with limited access to after-school programming to participate in safe, fun, hands-on learning environments that offer lots of traditional 4-H activities and other special events and include sustance abuse prevention education," says Linda Schultz, Extension 4-H youth specialist and director of the new 4-H Share/Care program.
The program aims to build self-esteem and other skills to help kids make better choices. All activities are accompanied by conversations about the dangers of substance abuse.
The program began in fall 1999 in response to the state's high rates of drug abuse. In a 1999 survey by the Children's Defense Fund, 18 percent of New Mexico eighth-graders reported using illegal drugs-up to 35 percent in some areas-compared with only 12 percent nationally.
The state's high number of "latchkey" children exacerbates the problem; an estimated 200,000 kids have no adult supervision after school. The U.S. Department of Justice provided $250,000 for Share/Care for the 1999-2001 school years. Extension contributed another $190,000, allowing more than 2,000 kids in 12 different counties to benefit so far, Schultz says.
The Rio Arriba program is modeled on 4-H Share/Care but financed by a separate, $750,000 Department of Justice grant to provide after-school activities for a three-year period. Rio Arriba leads the state in per capita deaths from heroin overdose, necessitating local attention.
Lasting impact has yet to be measured, but for now, Schultz says the after-school programs offer kids a fun, healthy alternative to being home alone or on the streets.
And kids in the program say it's been a great experience. "Me and my friends had a lot of fun doing this stuff," says 10-year-old Matthew Brennan, who helped plant a vegetable garden last summer at Albuquerque's César Chávez Community Center. "I wish we could make another garden."
Kids, Cows and More
 |
| How now brown cow? Cody Lightfoot with Southwest Dairy Farmers says the most popular question city kids ask about dairy cows is "Does chocolate milk come from brown cows?" |
Thousands of urban children in New Mexico and West Texas are getting a taste of farm life through the Kids, Cows and More program. The program brings the farm to the city, teaching kids where their food and fiber comes from.
"We want to teach young people to appreciate agriculture," says project leader Alfred Gonzalez with NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service. "The more I do this, the more amazed I am at how far removed people are from agriculture. We want to change that."
Gonzalez initiated the program in El Paso in 1990 with the Southwest Dairy Farmers organization. The expansion is a cooperative effort of NMSU Extension, Texas A & M University and Southwest Dairy Farmers, which provides funding and supervision for the program.
>Last year, more than 30,000 people participated in the El Paso program, and a pilot program was held in Albuquerque. "I want to expand this program throughout the state slowly and solidly and take it to a different level," Gonzalez says.
This year, in addition to Albuquerque, programs were held in Roswell and Los Lunas. Other programs are planned for Las Cruces, Ruidoso and Clovis in fall 2001 and spring 2002.
Many of the children who attend Kids, Cows and More are three and four generations removed from an agricultural background, says Mike Looper, an NMSU dairy specialist who helps coordinate the program.
"A lot of kids who go to this program have never even seen a dairy cow," he says. "They don't know what a cow eats, and they don't know about curds and whey or dairy products. We show them that this is an important part of their lives each day, because they obviously eat."
The existing programs feature a mobile milking demonstration.
"We have a parlor set up where we milk a cow in front of the kids so they can see that the milk comes from the udder and not from the back of the store," Gonzalez says.
The expo also features cheese- and butter-making exhibits. Youngsters learn how baby calves are nurtured, what cows eat to produce milk and why drinking milk is important for developing strong, healthy bones.
In addition to dairy-related demonstrations, the "more" portion of the program includes presentations about local agricultural commodities.
In El Paso, for example, exhibits featured pecans, cotton, beef cattle and gardening. Roswell's program had chile and honey bee presentations.
Gonzalez says the program fills an educational gap. "It used to be that teachers would take kids to farms on field trips," he says. "But now, because of distance, because of farm specialization and liability, that option isn't always available."
"The natural way to expand the program is by working with Extension agents," he says. "But we also want to work with any other groups that have an interest in our program."
Gonzalez plans to add pre- and post-testing of participants to the program to track the success of the presentations. "The goal is not only to reach as many kids as possible, but also to provide quality educational experiences for them," he says.
Getting connected
 |
| Training the trainers: Curtis Smith, foreground, Extension horticulture specialist, and Kevin Robinson, assistant editor with the agricultural communications department, learn new ways to reach clients through online technology during an in-service training in March. |
Distance education is becoming less remote for rural New Mexicans through new online technology and plans for 47 new NMSU learning centers.
In April, NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service opened the first four of these centers, which will offer training workshops and for-credit courses, in Clayton, Fort Sumner, Mosquero and Santa Rosa.
The opening in Clayton, located 414 miles from NMSU's main campus inLas Cruces, included a demonstration of new distance education technology that allows live voice transmission on the Internet.
NMSU is the first Extension Service in the nation to use HorizonLive software, which features simultaneous online chats and visual aids. With adequate bandwidth, streaming video also can be incorporated into online classes.
New Mexicans with modem connections also can access live and archived presentations from their own homes.
Billy Dictson, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Home Economics and Extension director, says it's the next step in taking the university to the people.
"This particular technology enables us to bring the university campus, specifically in this case, the New Mexico State University campus, to all the citizens of New Mexico who either have a computer and Internet access at home or in their business or can come to an Extension office somewhere in the state," Dictson says.
To accommodate the new technology, Extension offices are getting high-speed Internet connections and additional computers with support from industry, Dictson says.
Eastern New Mexico Rural-Plateau Communications, based in Clovis, has provided high-speed DSL connections in the first four learning centers, which are located in its service area.
New Mexico Technet will equip all of the NMSU learning centers statewide with computers for networked labs at an estimated cost of $50,000.
Faculty are applying for additional grants to support the effort and foster connections with remote locations.
"I can't express how excited I am about what I see coming in the future," Dictson says. "I'm looking forward to the day when using this technology is as common as picking up a cellular phone."