Community Vitality

Rural, suburban, and urban communities throughout Kansas face many challenges. When citizens are encouraged to combine their experiences and skills to work together, everyone in the community benefits.

What We Are Doing

• Living and working in every county, K-State Research and Extension staff engage community groups and share expertise from the three K-State campuses.
• Helping communities of all sizes maintain necessary services, such as grocery stores, that hire locally and generate local sales tax.
• Working directly with farmers, ranchers, and families to develop better financial management practices.

Results

• Improved communities through the Kansas PRIDE program, which reported 419 collaborative partnerships and 56,723 adult and youth volunteer hours worth $1.15 million.
• Trained Master Gardeners who donated more than 79,000 hours of service, a value of $1.6 million.
• Provided financial information through agmanager.info to 104,983 visitors per month.
• Partnered with state agencies to develop a Rural Grocery Tool Kit with resources for existing grocery stores and communities wanting to establish a new store.