t On Marine Ex- tension and Georgia Sea Grant’s annual “Skidaway Marine Science Day” the pub- lic is invited to enjoy (among other things) catch-and-release crabbing from the dock behind the facility and to meet reptiles native to the coast. q
Conference resulted in Georgia Sea Grant funding a two-year research project focusing on economic development for Black/African American/Gul - lah Geechee businesses and entrepreneurship in Coastal Georgia. What we learn from that re - search will be applied in local efforts. What kinds of partnerships do you encourage, and why are they important? Partnerships are central to all of our work. We in - corporated input from various stakeholders to ini - tiate these projects, but in each case, we partnered with Explore Georgia (our state tourism program) to help us. For the CARE program, we also worked closely with Manomet, a shorebird research/con -
servation organization, along with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to ensure that the training information presented on shorebirds was accurate, current, and relevant to our coast.
What are your plans for expanding your program?
The CARE training is ongoing, and we want to expand it to include topics beyond shorebirds. We also will survey participants about their in - volvement and needs for future programming. If we can secure more grant funds, we’d love to hold another pitch competition. We’re also adding a Coastal Tourism Extension Specialist to our pro - gram and hope they’ll be on board early in 2023.
42 The NET Effect | Extension Foundation/NTAE
Extension Foundation/NTAE | The NET Effect 43
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