Food and Nutrition Service Promising Practices website

Posted by on January 29, 2012

FNS Launches New Promising Practices Webpage and Database

I remember working on a small 15 acre CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm one summer and witnessing a nice conversation between my employer and another farmer.  My farmer told the other farmer about how successful his Sorghum-Sudangrass summer cover crop was at suppressing weeds.  He said he barely saw any weeds in that particular field afterwards.  The other farmer slowly nodded and I instantly knew that he was going to store that promising practice in his memory bank and implement it one day on his farm.

If only there was a formal, easily accessible way to share simple, but very useful promising practices like the aforementioned one.  Well, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has just created a new Promising Practices webpage that serves this purpose, albeit for practices related to FNS programs.  On this new webpage, you (the operators, promoters, and advocates) of our many FNS programs have a place where you can share your promising practices.  The new page allows you to submit promising practices using an easy online form that does not require any downloading, printing, or emailing.  If you or your organization has a particular outreach strategy that has increased program participation and/or improved program delivery of any FNS program in your community, then please take a few minutes to fill out the online form and click submit.  We are always looking for promising practices for any one of our many FNS programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), School Breakfast Program (SBP), and Food Distribution on Indian Reservations (FDPIR).

If your promising practice is approved, it will then be put into the FNS Promising Practices database and made searchable and accessible to the world.  Interested individuals and organizations will be able search the Promising Practices database for ideas and inspiration by using various filters.  Users can search promising practices by state, target population, program area, and/or year.  Users can also use a keyword search to find very specific promising practices.  The hope is that after reading some promising practices, these individuals and organizations will use what they learned to increase access or improve program delivery of our food assistance programs in their communities.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/outreach/promising/

For more information please email outreachcoalition@fns.usda.gov