Thanks to Red Bird Mission and Grow Appalachia,  Karen and I were able to attend the Brushy Fork Annual Institute. This was a great opportunity for both of us to learn a lot of things that will help us better serve our community and improve our job skills.
    The Brushy Fork Institute offered us a wide range of hands on workshop tracks that help to develop skills in things from grant writing and web site development to community development . It is also a great opportunity to network with other people working to improve their community.

     I attended the Effective communication by choice track. This was a workshop centered on communication in  both ordinary and challenging situations. It teaches you skills to offer full partnership in communication,  improving the effectiveness of the discussion. This was a great track for me. I enhanced my ability to build better relationships through communications and to make my communication efforts more effective.

     Karen attended the track titled Managing Your Own Organizations Online Presence. Participants in this track learned to evaluate your organizations online presence to ensure that your website and social media platforms are up to date and user friendly. She learned skills such as , how to update your website, embedded videos from a You Tube channel and how to create and manage an organizational Facebook page . You can visit our new Facebook page she created at www. Facebook.com/RBMAgriculture.