Locavore Program Planning Lessons
Locavore.Guide is a self-guided workshop designed to help R3 (Recruiting, Retention, and Reactivation) professionals attract and train individuals interested in locally sourced food to become hunters and anglers.
The program will walk you through a series of brief video lessons and short exercises. At the end of the program, your exercises will be combined to become a locavore program for your organization.
You need to understand locavores and their motivations before you can develop a locavore program for your organization. This lesson gives you an understanding of locavores and the local food movement as well as several other audiences that might be likely to sign up for a food-motivated hunting or fishing class. The lesson also introduces the concept of personas and how you can use them to develop and market your program.
Quite a bit of effort goes into developing a locavore hunting or fishing program, getting it approved, staffing it, and finally training new hunters and anglers. This lesson gives you the background you'll need to develop a program that your organization will approve.
Evaluation is key to any successful program. If you don't have objectives and a means of measuring if you've met them, how can you justify the investment in time and money that goes into starting and maintaining your program? This lesson lays out the basics of evaluation for a hunter/angler training program.
A great program in a city with no potential students can never succeed. This lesson teaches you the science of location selection so you can locate your program where the most likely participants live and work.
You need to let potential students know that your program exists if you expect them to sign up. This lesson walks you through the process of determining the best media (and other locations) to promote your program to get it in front of hungry locavores.
How do you develop ads, social media posts, press releases, and other messages that will encourage new adult hunters and anglers to sign up for your locavore program? This lesson explains marketing in a whole new, outdoorsy way that is sure to help you reach your audience.
It's much easier to get a potential hunter or angler to come to an event like a game tasting or a brief fishing class than it is to get them to sign up for a series of classes. This section outlines the process of finding partners and setting up events that will attract larger numbers of prospects to your locavore programs.
The students in your locavore hunting and angling programs may not be the students you are used to in hunter education courses or other outreach programs. This lesson helps you better adapt your curriculum to various learning styles.
It's very likely that your current hunter education courses and even your hunter and angler training programs are designed for "traditional" hunters and anglers. That isn't necessarily the best approach for teaching new, adult hunters and anglers, especially those who are interested in the locavore movement. This lesson lays out some fairly easy and unobtrusive strategies for making your program more locavore friendly without alienating your traditional audience.
In the past, new hunters and anglers came from outdoor families, and all the social support they needed to get up early on Saturday and hit the woods or head out to the boat ramp came from friends and family. Many of the adults interested in becoming hunters and anglers don't have that support. They likely don't have friends or family who hunt or fish, so they don't have anyone to ask for questions, practice their shots with, or double check that they set their alarm. You can't be there to make sure they get out of bed on time, but this lesson will show you other ways you can offer social support to your students during and after their class.
You've taken the Locavore.Guide workshop and done all the exercises, what's next?