Leading Through Extension - Ashley Helmholdt and garden based learning

Episode links: Episode Transcript: PAUL TREADWELL: Welcome to Extension Out Loud, a podcast from Cornell Cooperative Extension. I am Paul Treadwell. KATIE BAILDON: And I'm Katie Baildon. PAUL TREADWELL: This is our final episode in the Living Through Extension series that we've been running. And as a side note, it's also the final episode that my co-host will be joining me for the show. We want to say goodbye to Katie Baildon and wish her best in her next career move. You'll be missed, Katie. KATIE BAILDON: Thanks Paul. I'll definitely miss doing these podcasts with you. PAUL TREADWELL: For today, who are we talking to? KATIE BAILDON: Today we talked to Ashley Helmholdt. And she's the Adult Program leader for Cornell garden-based learning, which means that she engages with master gardeners and master gardener coordinators across New York state. ASHLEY HELMHOLDT: My name is Ashley Helmholdt, and I'm the adult program leader for Cornell Garden-based learning. I've been here for approximately two years. It's been a really interesting journey getting back to extension work because it's really where I started off in most of my volunteering and even some of my practicum work in college and graduate school. So, I'm from western New York but I've lived all over this country. I've lived in Michigan for a large chunk of my life. I went to undergrad there, Michigan State. And lived in Savannah, Georgia, as well. And across these experiences, I really have more of a background in urban planning and environmental studies and environmental justice. And so I have this real focus on the urban environment, but the impacts of urban greening on local communities. And that's really been the central theme of my career. And so it's a little different way of getting to working with the master gardener volunteer program at Cornell garden-based learning, but it makes a lot of sense when thinking about my background. I really worked in a national nonprofit called Earth Force, where I worked with watershed-based education in a lot of urban areas throughout the Midwest, as well as working for several years for farmers markets and farmer's markets nutrition education programs, starting up a SNAP program at a farmers market and Double Up Food Bucks program, which is similar to what we have in New York state around increasing purchasing of fruits and vegetables. So I really got kind of cut my teeth more on environmental education and farmer's market work. And then really, that led into doing some local government work in a sustainability office in Savannah, Georgia, where I worked directly with community organizations and community gardens and really helping to support, organize, develop, volunteer programs, even developing a sustainability plan and several grant programs that supported this idea of using vacant spaces in urban areas to really support those communities, whether it be through food security or reducing flooding. The central theme of my career is just working in these vacant, underutilized spaces and helping support the way that we can enhance urban greening through them. Like I said, community gardens were really a central part to that. So when I moved back to New York state after having my son, I really was interested in getting back into that work. And really extension is just the perfect kind of place for me. Because this place for applied research really takes place right, where we take the great work going on at Cornell and we apply it to communities where they can use it. And so that's what I really went to school for. I really was interested in more of the applied piece, how does this really address community issues. And that's exactly what the Master Gardener Volunteer program does. It prepares adults to take on action projects in communities, to work with community partners, to address issues through the use of gardens. I really love that, and that's what Cornell Garden-based learning is all about. And we really prepare those...