Feeding Innovation Successfully Moves to Online Instruction
On May 21, 2020, the South Carolina Community Loan Fund’s Feeding Innovation program awarded $20,000 to a startup healthy-food business in Beaufort County, South Carolina. This was the culmination of ten weeks of instruction for eleven participants who were aided in business plan development and business promotion.
The first session of Feeding Innovation started on March 11, 2020, in Bluffton, South Carolina. The participants had one face-to-face interaction with their instructor before they had to go completely online for the remaining nine weeks of classes due to the COVID-19 shutdown of most public venues. This was a challenge for both participants and the instructor.
Clemson Agribusiness Team member, Steve Richards, was the instructor for this class and had never considered teaching extension courses online. Steve had this to say about his experience:
“I love face-to-face teaching of business planning courses. It’s the interaction between the instructor and the participants that makes the class exciting. With the pivot to online instruction, we all were tested in terms of how we could interact, learn, and pay attention to an online curriculum. I know I learned a lot from the experience and am happy we were able to pull this off with much patience and perseverance from the participants and the South Carolina Community Loan Fund.”
Feeding Innovation is a program of the South Carolina Community Loan Fund. Clemson Cooperative Extension provides the curriculum and the instruction for the nine-week program. The South Carolina Community Loan Fund has been running Feeding Innovation since 2014 and has helped seventy participants create and pitch business plans and has awarded $120,000 in seed capital. Another Feeding Innovation program will be offered in the Fall of 2020 with an additional $20,000 to be awarded to the best healthy-food business plan. Will Culler, also with Clemson’s Agribusiness Team, will be the instructor.
Submitted by: Nathan Smith, Agribusiness Program Team Director
