From helping farm families cope with financial and personal stress and teaching families parenting skills to helping urban communities concerned with violence, finding opportunities for older Americans to volunteer with youth in 4-H programs and working with policy makers as they struggle with welfare reform choices, Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) is enriching the lives of children, youth and families throughout New York state.

To better inform New Yorkers about the services and programs centered on the theme "Children, Youth, and Family Well-Being," Cornell Cooperative Extension is celebrating CCE Week this year, Oct. 4 to 10.

"One of our missions is to enable children, youth and adults to identify and build on their strengths and expand their capacities to build relationships for positive family, friend, community and work lives. These are all critical to the well-being of the country," says Merrill Ewert, CCE director. "Positive growth and development of children and families require adults spending meaningful time in children's lives and supportive community networks that invest in children, youth and adults. Our educational programs are designed to strengthen families and communities and to help them better deal with important issues such as housing, parenting, dependent care, financial management, work preparedness, science literacy and youth development."

The week-long celebration is an attempt to inform as many New Yorkers as possible about how the Cornell Cooperative Extension educational system can help all kinds of people improve their lives and communities by taking advantage of its programs and resources, says Carol Anderson, CCE associate director. "These programs are focused on putting experience and university-generated research knowledge to work in practical ways to build strong families, responsible youth, and healthy, supportive communities."

Each year, 400 extension educators and 60,000 volunteers throughout New York partner with individuals -- both adults and youth, families, businesses and policy makers in programming that focus on 4-H youth development, nutrition, health, financial management, housing, analysis of policies, human development and more. Among those research-based programs focusing on children, youth and families are:

• Financial education, money management skills and financial counseling through a program called Money 2000. Increasing savings, decreasing debt and learning to save for the future, painlessly but effectively, are the goals of the program.
• FarmNet, a Cornell program that provides farm families with expertise they need. FarmNet is a network of contacts, support services, financial consulting and information to help farm families develop new skills, including financial- and stress-management for agricultural workers who were affected by the ice storm in the North Country this past winter.
• Science and technology youth education. In an informal setting, these complement what schools teach. Youth develop a better understanding and appreciation of real-world applications of science related to the environment, textiles and foods.
• Housing programming. Reducing radon contamination, indoor air pollution, lead poisoning and pollution from household chemicals as well as improving housing options, availability, accessibility and afford ability for limited resource families and seniors are important across the state.
• Youth and family education programs. Promoting health and well-being, pregnancy prevention, literacy, community service, food systems, technology, job preparedness and science education through research-based programming are goals of CCE programs. These programs also focus on improving child-care decisions and child-care facilities, fostering family supports and parent and grandparent education, helping seniors connect with youths, reducing family violence and child abuse and improving day and residential camps and after-school programs.
• 4-H youth development. Involving more than 28,000 youths in grades K-12, 4-H enhances youth development by promoting skills in leadership, teamwork, public speaking, self-esteem, communication, community involvement and planning.
• Adult well-being. Various programs, such as Career and Home Opportunities Integrated with Community Education and Services (C.H.O.I.C.E.S.) and Good Neighbors, support adults in completing diplomas and attaining additional education, improving employment status, life skills and food and nutrition practices and strengthening problem-solving, decision making, policy making and community organizing skills. Also, CCE's Community Disaster Response mobilized with local crisis intervention teams to respond to problems induced by the January 1998 ice storm.

In addition, extension has more 2,000 low-cost publications available on most of these topics and others, including agriculture; gardening, wildlife, fish, waste, dairy and soil management; and textiles. Throughout a year, satellite broadcasts focus on a range of topics for a variety of audiences, such as policy makers participating in welfare reform discussions on key policy options. Anyone can access extension information either through county extension offices via the World Wide Web or a national CYBERnet of which Cornell Cooperative Extension is an active partner.

County extension offices will be celebrating CCE Week around the state. For more information on any of the issues above, contact your local county extension office or see http://www.cce.cornell.edu/index.html on the World Wide Web.