Report: Developing Farmers Markets at 1890 Land-Grant Universities

FMPP Report: Promoting Farmers Market Impacts

Over a three-year period, the project Promoting Farmers Markets Impacts: Building Local and State Level Capacity for Data helped increase the capacity of five state farmers market associations to develop data-driven National Farmers Market Week promotion campaigns with the goal of improving attendance at markets in these states and to help create and test a new set of standardized data collection tools and resources to aid markets in building or updating market-level evaluation plans. Through this project, FMC built a new comprehensive resource library and website centered on farmers market evaluation which includes a “quick start” market evaluation tool; step-by-step guides to plan, collect, track, analyze, and share data related to markets; and a bank of survey questions and associated data collection tools. In the future, FMC hopes to use these tools to collect additional market data at the national level which will be accessible to all stakeholders (including market operators, farmers, ranchers, and consumers), enabling the sector to better respond to future challenges and opportunities. Coupled with technical assistance and evaluation training, tool/software comparisons, public data, and enhancements to FMC’s National Farmers Market Week (NFMW) Toolkit, FMC is helping market operators and state associations promote markets to stakeholders and increase shopper and vendor participation.

Read a summary of the 2021 FMPP activities and outcomes in the report attached.

Communities of Practice Resource Kit

This resource kit is intended to provide potential and current community leaders with information about CoPs and tools for community development. The resource kit defines the CoP approach and provides templates and guides that can be used to develop a new community or enhance an existing community.

The CoP Resource Kit contains the following sections:

• Introduction to Communities of Practice — Learn about the theory behind CoPs, the CoP approach, benefits of joining a CoP, roles and responsibilities within a CoP, and success stories from current communities.
• Launch a Community of Practice — Learn how to plan and launch a CoP.
• Sustain a Community of Practice – Learn how to encourage ongoing participation and sustain a CoP over time.
• Evolve a Community of Practice – Learn how to manage your CoP over time to ensure you are continuing to meet your objectives and your member’s needs.
• Evaluate a Community of Practice — Recognize the importance of evaluation and how to successfully conduct an evaluation of your CoP.
• Glossary — Discover explanations of terms related to CoPs.
• References — Review the sources used to develop this Resource Kit and a selection of other books, web sites, and information related to CoPs.
• Resources — Explore resources, such as templates, guides, and examples of documents commonly used by new and existing CoPs. Each template is downloadable and allows you to modify as necessary.

Creating Communities of Practice

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE?

• A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or an interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals.
• Communities of practice often focus on sharing best practices and creating new knowledge to advance a domain of professional practice. Interaction on an ongoing basis is an important part of this.
• Many communities of practice rely on face-to-face meetings as well as web-based collaborative environments to communicate, connect and conduct community activities.

Graphic created by Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium, Numeracy for All community of practice

Introduction to communities of practice

The term “community of practice” is of relatively recent coinage, even though the phenomenon it refers to is age-old. The concept has turned out to provide a useful perspective on knowing and learning. A growing number of people and organizations in various sectors are now focusing on communities of practice as a key to improving their performance.

This brief and general introduction examines what communities of practice are and why researchers and practitioners in so many different contexts find them useful as an approach to knowing and learning.