The Latest Dirt - July 2023

Volunteer Support Hard At Work

By Jon Dwyer

The Volunteer Support project of the Contra Costa County UC Master Gardener’s organization is one of only three of the 15+ projects that are 100% “inward facing,” which means that all of the various activities within the project are in support of the UC Master Gardeners and do not deal with the general public.

Currently, most of our focus is on the Annual Reappointment Process. The process is quite a bit more complex than one would imagine, as, unfortunately, life “happens” for some of our members, and they cannot always continue as fully active CoCoMGs. Sorting out these situations and working to find ways to accommodate them takes time. Still, we believe that it is essential to do everything we can to resolve them, while ensuring that we are adhering to the requirements of the UC Master Gardener program.

It seems like only yesterday that we welcomed the new 2023 Class, and we are now already well along with recruiting for the 2024 Class. We’ve held four virtual information sessions, the last on June 24. Applications will be due back in late July.

We were able to have our Holiday Party & Business Meeting in December 2022 and, just recently, our Spring Social at Our Garden. The Hospitality team did an excellent job for both events and deserves a heartfelt “Thank You.” Each time we do one of these now, it feels more and more like we’ve put the pandemic in our rearview mirror.

We were also able to offer a number of logo–wear clothing items and miscellaneous “swag” for purchase by CoCoMGs at the spring event.

Last year, as most will remember, we all got ‘new’ badges, and the process was handled seamlessly by our Badge Manager, Kristina Gutilla. She also distributed the new hour–level recognition pins and badges at the December and Spring meetings. Kristina will relinquish those duties at the start of the new CoCoMG year. She has set a pretty high bar for her replacement to meet.

I’m pretty sure that almost everyone will agree that there have been some “challenges” with website access, all of which were far beyond the ability of anyone in the CoCoMG program to address.