Reaching Untapped & Underserved Audiences Respondents revealed a clear need and desire to expand program reach to new, untapped and underserved audiences, including youth, women landowners and decision makers, and inland and rural communities. It’s difficult to reach many audiences, and Extension should focus on extending existing C/EW programs with actionable solutions to a broader clientele/more people rather than creating new programs. In other words, don’t reinvent the wheel, for efficiency and cost effectiveness purposes, when working to engage new audiences and clientele. ● “One other challenge is the need to integrate climate science... even just basics, into our educational system earlier. I think that it is something that impacts so many sectors and commerce of our states and our country and in some ways we do a disservice to ourselves that our population is not more knowledgeable. And to help communities and individuals to make more informed decisions. But we have to start at a younger age. And I think that there's opportunity, whether it's junior high, high school and then once individuals choose to go on to college and get a degree, and having it be more interdisciplinary ...I could see opportunities in the recreation programs as well as business programs and agriculture.” (R10) ● “...lots of opportunities. One that comes to mind off the bat is expanding capacity for [K -12 youth] climate programs. How can we engage more teachers and students and schools ? ...expanding the climate [youth programming] capacity. I feel like that could be a fulltime job.” (R01) ● “A large focus of my time right now is teaching students about climate change. That’s really exciting work if I can make it interesting for them and get them interested in working on the issue, then that is success… And training the next generation is really important. ” (R11)
● “...there are probably two areas that come to mind [where] I think we could add value [and address unmet needs]: one is more youth-focused programming . And another is working with tribes and also tribal youth ...working with indigenous peoples . I think there's lots of room for us to work there.” (R06)
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If funding resources were available, one respondent stated that they would prioritize allocating it “ definitely more to inland communities, just because that’s a gap with a lot of the funding sources for climate work.” (R01)
● “A lot of [my work] lately has been centered around programming aimed specifically at women
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