Leveraging Cooperative Extension to Build an Enduring Capacity for Equitable and Inclusive Resilience in Rural Agricultural Communities across Coastal Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware

Recipient: Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech University
Funding Amount: $1,973,267

This project will establish a regional collaborative to support climate resilience in rural communities in the Delmarva region, where agriculture plays a key role in the local economy and culture. Project partners will conduct a needs assessment and a series of community listening sessions to identify current capabilities, challenges, and opportunities to increase resilience, particularly in low-income, minority, and agricultural communities. The project will then design and implement educational programming to help address these challenges. Led by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, this project will create enduring capacity among extension professionals and rural localities to initiate climate adaptation and resilience projects more effectively and engage with resilience-building efforts more broadly.

For more information on the grant program funding this project, please visit the Inflation Reduction Act webpage. For more information on the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, visit the Office for Coastal Management’s resilience challenge webpage.