Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Additional Plants: native plants, trees

• Ecosystem: Ecosystem

• Natural Areas: forestry (conifer), forestry (hardwood), wildlife

• Pollinators: habitat

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: monitoring/scouting, prevention

• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity

• Sustainable Communities: public participation, quality of life

This project would provide funding to the Midwest Invasive Plant Network (MIPN) from the North Central IPM Center’s Nationwide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) grant to support efforts to deliver invasive species information to a more diverse audience. MIPN’s mission is to reduce the impacts of invasive plants in the Midwest. A critical step in achieving this mission is to ensure that information on awareness, detection, reporting, and effective management of invasive species reaches a broad audience. MIPN has had a series of internal conversations about how this can be accomplished and has identified several goals that are in line with the objectives of this grant award opportunity.

Upon receipt of this award, MIPN would increase the cultural competency of MIPN staff and board by participating in DEIA training. We would also conduct a DEIA needs assessment and assess our current outreach materials to identify gaps in DEIA efforts and develop a response plan. Finally, we would create a MIPN internal accessibility standard document to be utilized for all resources and tools developed going forward and train other non profit organizations with a similar mission to evaluate and improve the DEIA of their outreach efforts and resources. Improving the delivery of invasive species information and resources to a more diverse audience will engage more people in invasive species prevention, detection, and rapid response and reduce the impacts of invasive species on the North Central region.

The objectives of this project include 1) providing training to increase the cultural competency of the MIPN staff and board, 2) assessing and updating the accessibility of our current outreach materials, 3) evaluating and developing a response plan for the DEIA needs of MIPN’s audience and 4) developing a  standards document to help ensure that our invasive species resources reach a more diverse audience, and 5) to train other organizations involved in invasive species and conservation to evaluate and revise their own outreach materials to be more accessible and inclusive.