Extension shares 2023 highlights

HARTINGTON – Nebraska Extension in Cedar County has more impact on the area than people realize.

Staff members with the Extension office, including Extension Educator Jackie Steffen, provided a review of their 2023 activities and programs to the board of commissioners on Jan. 23.

Steffen presented a packet of papers to the commissioners titled “Cedar County: Impact At-A-Glance.”

“We put this together every year for stakeholders,” Steffen said. “It’s a really good piece that gives a good snapshot of some of the different impacts that we’ve had in 2023.”

The packet included information about Emily Soll, a former Cedar County 4-H participant.

“She is a 4-H alumni,” Steffen said. “She would’ve graduated probably five or six years ago from the Cedar County 4-H program. The reason we chose to highlight her in this story is because of all the programming and opportunities that she had in 4-H in Cedar County, it helped her decide on a future career.”

Soll, a Coleridge native, became a 4-H Extension educator for east-central Nebraska’s Hamilton and Merrick counties in early 2023.

“That’s a true testament to our program,” Steffen said.

The Cedar County 4-H program has seen a 55 percent increase in enrollment in the past 10 years, with about 250 4-H current participants.

“We’re really proud of the involvement of our 4-H’ers, our families, our schools, our volunteers,” Steffen said. “We hope to continue to be able to grow the program as well.”

She explained to the commissioners the Extension office has to turn in an annual impact report to the state and highlighted a couple of the programs she has been involved in during the past year. Her area of focus is early childhood.

“For myself each year, I look for different opportunities to grow as an educator, to reach new audiences and to intensify my programming efforts,” Steffen said. “This past year, I presented 48 early childhood programs and I was able to reach almost 2,000 early childhood professionals.

“In Nebraska for licensure, you need to have 12 continuing (education) or professional development hours a year for childcare providers,” she said. “With the different programs that I did, I was able to award 2,294 programming or professional development hours.”

She said she was selected to be a part of the Nebraska Early Childhood Policy Leadership Academy.

“It’s really just an opportunity to network and work with people across the state to become a more effective advocate for early childhood in our community and then beyond our community as well,” Steffen said.

She described a “capstone project” she has been working on with Jessica Lueth, who is the director of the Cardinal Kids Learning Center in Randolph and also is a part of the Nebraska Early Childhood Policy Leadership Academy.

“Our capstone project is with our (Cedar County) Communities for Kids,” Steffen said, referring to the area organization that partners with communities’ public and private entities to support and coordinate planning for access to high-quality early childcare care and education.

Their capstone project includes an early childhood conference scheduled for March 23 at Nissen Family Vineyards located near Hartington.

“We’re really excited about the lineup of speakers that we have,” Steffen said. “We’ve been working on getting business support. We have over 30 businesses in Cedar County that have stepped up to be a part of this confer-