The Hub Farm - Environmental Education Engagement in Durham, NC

The Hub Farm is a 52-acre farm in north Durham, dedicated to “...improving the academic achievement and well-being of students in Durham Public Schools through experiential outdoor learning.” More than an agricultural waypoint, the Hub Farm enables community engagement in core social, environmental, and economic aspects of sustainability. Outdoor experiential learning has documented benefits, including improvements in participants’ leadership skills, critical thinking skills, and care for the environment. Enabling the Hub Farm to increase its participation levels is a step towards positively impacting potentially hundreds of school-children in and around Durham.
The Hub Farm aims to reach a larger, more diverse student visitor population in Durham’s school district. As such, this team’s research questions focus on: current demographics of visitors, visitor motivations, barriers for access, and strategies for future engagement. In order to address these points of focus, the team conducted interviews and surveys while also analyzing visitor data and reports from the Hub Farm. Recommendations for programming and marketing were compiled into a report and presented to clients.