GrowFlorida Economic Gardening Program Report – November 2009 through May 2013 YTD, including projections through 2015

If you need hard info about Economic Gardening results, take a look at http://www.matr.net/files/GrowFLProgram2009-2013.pdf .

Florida http://www.growfl.com/ was the first statewide program initiated over 3
years ago and it has been the most extensively studied by third parties
including their state auditor.

Florida has done everything right including developing a statewide hub and
spoke network, getting extensive and ongoing training for their staff, two
years of shadowing and mentoring, acquiring the right tools, developing the
right relationships with local ED personnel (with regular webinar meetings
managed by Tammie Nemecek) and using an active and continuous public media
campaign.

Our partnership with the University of Central Florida in Orlando (the
second largest campus in the country with 65,000 students) has been
exemplary. The school has a history of partnering on all kinds of projects
and the entrepreneurial orientation (they run a number of incubators) is the
perfect culture for hosting an EG program. Dr. Tom O’Neal and his staff
including Fran Korosec and Robin Phelps have guided this program through a
number of rapids and still produced outstanding results–right through the
heart of the Great Recession.

Chris Gibbons, Founder

National Center for Economic Gardening https://nationalcentereg.org/