Team Combat; Macro-Post 3
National Farmers Day is an annual celebration to honor the heritage of farmers around the world, originating in West Africa, more specifically Ghana in 1985. However, now this observance is held around the world to give thanks to the individuals who sustain the rest of the population, surprisingly in the United States farmers only make up 2% of the population, according to census data. Thus, the Team Combat group was invited to the Coats annual Farmers Day celebration to assist the veteran’s treatment court (VTC) in spreading awareness about their mission, program, and how community members could contribute to this underserved population of veterans, who inadvertently had already contributed to the Coats community. Overall, this considerably aided in my understanding of the community in which I’m now apart of, the issues revolving around funding, how to diffuse information about the Veterans Treatment Court, and how difficult it can be to enact change by relying on a population that is disproportionately disadvantaged along with the individuals we are attempting to support.
During my time at the Coats Farmers Day festival, I was encouraged to see a community, especially a rural one, able to acquire the resources to commemorate a population often overlooked. The feeling during the day was an optimistic one for many reasons, first I witnessed the participants of the festival excited to get outside again, since as a society we are still dealing with a pandemic. Also, the gathering instilled a since of enthusiasm in me and allowed me to realize change is possible, especially for those who feel neglected. Our practicum group had our first experience communicating with our community members and fellow veterans; we accomplished our competencies by handing out pamphlets created by the veteran’s treatment court and collected donations that will be used to enhance the outreach of the treatment court. Specifically, this method accomplished our eighteenth and nineteenth public health competencies, which puts an emphasis on communication. Most notably characterized by using communication strategies that encompass different audiences and sectors. We did by having different modes to deliver the message; by using brochures and donation jars with written, visual, and numeric material, and oral communication to effectively spread the courts message. These methods allowed us to supply information to many populations including able bodied community members, those who have disabilities such as being deaf or hard of hearing, blind, or even children by utilizing pictures and slogans on the jars to convey the message. All of which I believe, made the communication of our information and the effect it had on the community that much more substantial.
The complications around funding and disseminating information in a rural community isn’t a new one but is a wicked one that needs to be altered to enhance underserved populations. By no fault of a certain individual, but rather a combination of social determents; rural populations face many issues not seen by their urban counterparts. Specific to the context of trying to spread information and collect money, events like these don’t happen very often in rural communities and asking an already impoverished community for funding can be extremely difficult. When discussing the scarcity of events like this in rural communities, its usually because of multiple factors, most common these include low participation caused by geographic isolation, far travel distances for members or a lack of public transportation, conflicts when members must decide how to use their time (work vs. fun), and limited ability of rural workers to set their own schedule. Along with this, the issue of collecting donations is a problematic one especially when asking a community that is disproportionately poorer than urban counterparts. Higher poverty rates in rural communities are caused by a host of contributors such as lower education attainment and employment opportunities, medical expenditures due to higher chronic illness rates, changes in the environment (since agriculture is a major industry) and many more that could affect how much spare income members have to donate. Lastly, because of all these rural specific issues the Veterans Treatment Court must work harder to attain resources and funding, along with creating innovative solutions to better inform its community members. All of which is in the hopes of helping this subpopulation of the community and therefore the community as a whole, thrive.
Farmers Day was an experience that I feel was essential to my understanding of the problem rural communities and organizations regularly face. Most shocking to me was the lack of attention these underserved populations get pertaining to problems affecting not only them but the community as a whole and because of this I feel community members need to realize that action in needed immediately to slow the impact of these issues. Most importantly, the community needs to realize how helping these minority populations will benefit the entire community and could result in improvements in areas which affect everyone. Simply put, as these problems continue it will certainly result in an increase of the chronic trend of out-migration from rural to urban centers, which will certainly add to the strain rural communities and the older populations left behind could face and might eventually dissolve rurality altogether, so “let’s make [a] change to help our veterans” and rural communities flourish in the near future.