pollinator health – Extension Foundation

Pollinators like bees, bats, and butterflies are vital for human health because they transfer pollen between plants, allowing many fruits, vegetables, and nuts that nourish us to grow and reproduce. Without these busy pollinators, our diets would be less diverse and lack essential vitamins and minerals found in pollinator-dependent crops. Educating youth about the importance of pollinators is critical. It empowers them to become stewards of these vital creatures, ensuring a healthy future for themselves and our planet.

“Pollinator Superheroes” Provides a Fun and Innovative Way to Educate Youth

Youth can learn about pollinators through “Pollinator Superheroes,” an animated series created for Native American elementary students in Nebraska and Oklahoma. It is supported by the New Technologies in Ag Extension program (NTAE).

Pollinator Superheroes is more than just a cartoon. The series aims to:

Inspire young viewers by getting them excited about identifying and protecting crucial pollinators.
Celebrate culture by reinforcing the importance of students’ actions, cultures, and native languages. It empowers youth to see themselves as heroes in protecting their environment and heritage.

Many younger generations in tribal communities lack opportunities to learn their heritage languages outside the home. The project addresses this critical issue, through partnerships with several organizations.

The Project is Growing and Evolving

The Pollinator Superheroes project began in late 2019 with a partnership between the National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC) and Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) to create a “Prep for Pollinators Campaign” for children and adults. The project expanded in 2020 with seasonal pollinator guides for the PVAMU and Pawnee Nation College (PNC) communities.

Animation took flight in 2021 and 2022. NPSEC, collaborating with Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC), secured last year’s NTAE Year 4 Expansion Grant to create Episode 1 of “Pollinator Superheroes: The Beginning.”

With support from NICC, PNC, PVAMU, and the St. Louis Zoo, KJM Digital produced Episode 1, a 20-minute episode centered around Nate, a fourth grader who enlists the help of four pollinators – Bat, Bumblebee, Hover Fly, and Monarch – to save his neighborhood from a misguided developer. Through the adventures of their animated friends, youth learn the crucial role they play in protecting pollinators while simultaneously being introduced to the Dakota language. The episode will be translated into other languages if more funding becomes available.

A through line for the project over the years has been Kara Maddox, who owns KJM Digital and serves as the lead for this year’s project, as a partner with Michigan State University. She emphasized the importance of the work, saying,

“Sometimes we forget the importance of nature in urban and suburban environments. Our goal for the project is to help kids learn the importance of pollinators through dynamic stories and characters by building a connection to nature in their home communities.”

Branching Out

A new round of NTAE funding is enabling the project team to expand its reach.

Through a partnership with the University of Georgia Extension and Dr. Allison Johnson (liaison to the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns and the Cherokee of Georgia Tribal Council), the team is bringing the Pollinator Superheroes project to communities in the southern United States. Dr. Johnson is the voice of Bat in Episode 1, and is leading the native seeds initiative, which is described below. A partnership with Michigan State University Extension and Tribal Educator Emily Proctor will help establish the project in the Upper Great Lakes region.

Nate’s Next Adventure – Planting a Pollinator Paradise

Episode 2 – due out in the fall – picks up with the inquisitive fourth grader, Nate. Nate faces a new challenge in his native community. Once again, his pollinator pals are there to help by planting one seed at a time.

The project team is committed to making the project even more inclusive. Episode 2 will feature a translation into the Cherokee language, joining the existing Dakota language version. The episode will also showcase exciting advancements in animation technology, using Adobe’s Character Animator with Body Tracker, powered by Adobe Sensei AI, which allows for real-time animation and smoother, more fluid movement for the characters.

Episode 2 also inspires action. To help young viewers put their newfound knowledge to work, the team is giving away native seed packets – perfect for planting on Earth Day! To receive seeds, scan the QR code below, directing you to the YouTube page, which has information on how to order the seeds. Maddox says, “We’re living at a tipping point and children need a role model they can count on – even if he’s a cartoon superhero! In Episode 2, Nate and his pollinators save his community by planting one seed at a time. We can do this at home with our native seed packets to help our pollinators as they help us.”

Connect and Learn More

Subscribe to the team’s new Pollinator Superheroes YouTube page.
Learn more about the project by reading the Pollen Power feature article in the 2023 NTAE Yearbook.
Share and Scan the QR code to learn how to order a native seed packet to create a pollinator-friendly habitat in your community. The QR code will take you to Episode 1 on Youtube. Click ‘more’ under the title to order free native seeds.
Have questions about the project? Please email the team at PollinatorSuperheroes2@gmail.com

This project is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension (funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186), grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Extension Foundation.

Discover more about NTAE-supported work and find additional resources in the 2022-2023 NTAE Yearbook and in the Extension Foundation’s publications library.

eXtension recently announced the opportunity for nominations for the New Technologies for Agricultural Extension (NTAE) for Year 2 projects. The nomination form will be available on June 15th until July 20th, 2020. Selected projects will receive wrap around services from the eXtension Foundation to support, accelerate, and amplify the project/program outcomes. Wrap around services include:

Project/Program advisory support from a Catalyst (current or past senior program or administrative Cooperative Extension Service (CES) personnel).
Support to compose a formal peer-reviewed publication of resources and processes used by the project which might be an eFieldbook or ePub publication.
Evaluation support
Digital engagement support for digital learning and instructing
Leadership support and training for adaptation to a digital environment
Professional engagement and development by encouraging all projects to share their processes and products via connect.extension.org.
Optional Wrap Around Services for selected project(s)
- Marketing efforts with an outside firm
- Partnership development assistance

What’s it like to work with eXtension Foundation as an NTAE project? We caught up with one of our Fellows that is leading one of our Year 1 projects.

@Tom Smith is the Executive Director for the National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC). NPSEC supports and serves Extension Pesticide Safety Education Programs (PSEPs) to be the premier national source of high quality research-based pesticide safety education.

Increasing the level of awareness about pesticides and their impact on pollinators by the general public can help to sustain pollinators around homes, farms and businesses. This project led by NPSEC is targeting messaging about pollinators and using mass media (radio, digital, social) to reach a larger audience than is typical with most Extension messaging. The project directs the audience to additional Extension resources and has developed a methodology to measure audience engagement, including change in behavior and implementation of practices benefiting both native and managed pollinators. The pilot is in a select group of Texas communities and the content resources available through the Cooperative Extension program at Prairie View A&M University.

Nathan Hermond, Extension Associate with Prairie View A&M University Cooperative Extension is working to help curate the content and resources available through the university and working hand-in-hand with the NPSEC team, including @Kara Maddox – Creative Director – to drive the public to those resources through the mass media initiative.

According to Dr. Carolyn Williams, Associate Administrator for the Cooperative Extension Program at Prairie View A&M University, “we are excited about this great opportunity to expand our program outreach to target the millennial population in an urban county. This partnership with eXtension and NPSEC has been an exceptional process working together to promote the Cooperative Extension Program at Prairie View A&M University and the Pollinator Pilot Campaign in an amazing mass media approach like never before.”

According to Tom Smith, “eXtension’s wrap around services have been very helpful. The eFieldbook provides an opportunity to create a unique and robust complementary resource. The NTAE catalyst team has provided us validation, support, and advice. The encouragement to design professional development webinars has allowed us to focus more purposely on the key components of our project.”

Thinking back to right before this team started working with the eXtension Foundation, Tom stated “eXtension has allowed us to accelerate our project and will hopefully provide proof of concept. During the course of the project, we had to make a pivot with one of our partners. The NTAE Catalyst team and others were supportive in really helping us convert a challenge into a real opportunity.”

Reflecting upon the value that the eXtension Foundation has brought to the project, Tom shared “one added value is the funding that has allowed us to take an idea and implement it as a pilot project. Additionally, the organizational support for scheduling meetings and professional feedback from the eXtension staff has been valuable. Connect Extension has also allowed us to have a great promotional and collaboration platform to engage with a broad group of Extension Educators and others interested in this project.”

Do you have an early stage, high potential project that you would like to nominate? Requirements of projects/programs are as follows:

Projects must be in early stages of maturity and have a high potential for making a significant local impact and providing a model for adoption by other Extension professionals regionally or nationwide. This means the project is likely to have objectives completed, audiences identified, outcomes identified and has had some early stage of implementation.
Each nomination should identify a lead (a Fellow) for the project that will serve as the primary contact.
All nominations must have the support of the Extension Director/Administrator.

Learn more about the application and nomination process here.

Tag Archive for: pollinator health

Celebrating Culture & Pollinators: Animated Series Honors Native Languages, Provides Science Education

“Pollinator Superheroes” Provides a Fun and Innovative Way to Educate Youth

The Project is Growing and Evolving

Branching Out

Nate’s Next Adventure – Planting a Pollinator Paradise

What’s It Like to Work with the eXtension Foundation as an NTAE Project? – Using Mass Media for Extension Messaging

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