2025 National EFNEP Coordinators' Conference

Do you have specific questions about WebNEERS?  Bring your laptop and join us for breakfast so that we can help! Beta team members will be available for questions, troubleshooting or individual consultations with WebNEERS during this breakfast session!

The ‘Breakfast with Beta – Region Level Users’ provides an opportunity for one-on-one and small group discussions with a WebNEERS Beta Team member to address individual concerns regarding the utilization and functionality of WebNEERS at the Region level.  The topics of conversation may be but are not limited to:  Adding Staff and Updating Hours, Creating Subgroups, Filters, Reviewing Data, and Maximizing WebNEERS to meet local-level needs.

Attendees should bring their laptop and be prepared to explore the system – real time!

EFNEP peer educators deliver nutrition, food safety, and physical activity education, with roles spanning teaching, data collection, and community engagement. Given their diverse responsibilities, a performance review process that reflects their contributions is crucial. However, traditional methods were burdensome and relied heavily on subjective assessments.

The Pennsylvania State University has worked continuously to improve equity in the evaluation process through a two-pronged system. First, we streamlined our peer educator self-assessment tool to reduce the burden on peer educators while documenting and sharing their accomplishments. Secondly, Nutrition Links leadership integrated technological advancement into the review process to eliminate administrative barriers and improve standardized scores for peer evaluators.

The initial roll out was favorably received by both supervisors and peer educators, and we continue to enhance the overall process. In this presentation, we will discuss the challenges of peer educator evaluation, provide examples of assessment tools, and share lessons learned.

Enhancing Nutrition Education with Technology: Leveraging Spend Smart. Eat Smart. for Lesson Engagement:
Are you looking for innovative ways to enhance your nutrition curriculum with the addition of technology to engage participants? Spend Smart. Eat Smart. is a free resource through Iowa State University that has been proven to make nutrition education in Iowa fun and modern with tools that are right at home in a high-tech world. For over 10 years, Spend Smart. Eat Smart. has been a widely used tool throughout the country and beyond. Spend Smart. Eat Smart. holds a reputation as an easy-to-use website and app that prides itself on being a credible source of nutrition information. Recent updates have expanded content to include information geared towards youth, as well as including physical activity videos to fit the needs of a diverse audience. Join us as we share how Spend Smart. Eat Smart. is used in Iowa as a lesson enhancement to promote participant engagement with relevant nutrition information and to stay connected to participants after graduation. We will share how Spend Smart. Eat Smart. can be a useful tool when teaching both in-person and virtually by sharing mini activities and lessons that can be added to your nutrition curriculum. This session will be an interactive look into how you can leverage Spend Smart. Eat Smart. in your program to train nutrition educators and better serve the participants in your communities.

​Enhancing Peer Educator Engagement and Staff Retention within the Indiana EFNEP Team:
The Indiana EFNEP team will present promising practices aimed at inspiring, recognizing, and retaining peer educators. We will explore how we leverage our existing staff to recruit and retain new team members effectively. Recognizing the significant challenges and investments involved in staff recruitment and onboarding, we have implemented several internal mechanisms to ensure our team members feel appreciated and valued, fostering long-term retention.

In this session, we will share strategies that incentivize current staff to participate actively in the recruitment process. Who better to advocate for a position than someone already thriving in it? We will also highlight the leadership opportunities we have developed for staff during the onboarding of new hires, alongside ongoing professional development training and mentoring activities.

Additionally, we have collaborated with our human resources department to establish advancement and promotion pathways based on years of service and experience. Our commitment to continuous education for peer educators includes opportunities to participate in a community health worker training and support for free tuition through Purdue Global for higher education.

Our findings demonstrate that investing in our current staff not only aids in attracting new personnel but also enhances the retention of our existing team members. We invite you to join us in discussing these effective practices and their impact on building a resilient and engaged workforce.
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EFNEP and SNAP-Ed are often delivered in settings where adult audiences are not engaged in the paid workforce such as in senior centers or drug treatment centers. Adults with traditional paid jobs but who do not earn wages that disqualify them from public benefits face barriers to attending nutrition education classes that are unique to their circumstances. Moreover, most EFNEP adult participants are women so there is limited understanding of motivation and barriers to attend nutrition education programs for people who identify as men. This session will present findings from a qualitative examination of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of SNAP eligible working adults as they relate to nutrition education. We will also discuss ways of engaging participants, recruitment, and retention strategies developed through these findings.

By the end of this session, conference attendees will understand the purpose, development process, and plan for monitoring the new EFNEP Partner website. To view the new website, please visit https://efnep.extension.org/. 

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