After six years of providing consumer and financial education to residents in Fulton and Montgomery Counties, Community Educator Craig Clark is leaving the Cornell University Cooperative Extension system.

As a result, some programs – such as CCEFM’s popular home energy conservation presentations and financial management workshops – will be placed on hold for the foreseeable future.  

Clark will be moving on to a new position with Capital Region BOCES beginning Tuesday, August 23. At BOCES, Clark will be working as a communications specialist with the Watervliet City School District.

Clark joined CCEFM in September 2005 after the local association completed a community needs survey that indicated financial education opportunities were lacking in the area. In 2004, CCEFM formed a committee comprised of local financial professionals, economic development specialists, agencies officials and others to look at the need and possible opportunities to provide local, research-based, unbiased financial education. The committee recommended the hiring of a financial educator.   

Over the last six years, Clark taught hundreds of free workshops for the general public and special audiences on basic budgeting, credit and debt management and residential energy conservation. The consumer and financial programs reached thousands of local adults, 4-H participants and local school children. As the consumer and financial educator, Clark was also a member of the statewide Family Economics Resource Management Program Work Team bringing a local voice to programming across the Cornell Cooperative Extension system. Most recently his work branched out to include maintaining www.ccefm.com and the utilization of social media for the local association.

While local consumer and financial programming will be on hiatus, the CCEFM Board of Directors and management team will be considering the programming vacancy created by Clark’s departure and how the subject matter might fit into a future local extension plan of work.