Annie’s Challenge, a nationwide non-profit to coach and empower girls in agriculture, is celebrating 20 years since its founding. In the present day, this system has over 19,000 graduates throughout 38 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Annie’s Challenge is an training program for ladies in agriculture and makes use of a strategy that builds confidence, develops networks and creates lifelong learners amongst girls farmers, ranchers, growers, landowners, and agriculturalists.
The inaugural class of 10 girls met in February 2003 in Centralia, IL, and a number of other members of the group gathered once more for a digital assembly by way of Zoom to share reminiscences of these early conferences and the affect Annie’s Challenge has had on their farms and lives this month to commemorate the milestone.
Annie’s Challenge is predicated on the lifetime of a farm lady, Annie Fleck, who spent her lifetime studying the right way to be an concerned enterprise associate together with her husband. She died in 1997 and was the inspiration for her daughter, Ruth Fleck Hambleton, to create Annie’s Challenge in 2003. Hambleton was a Farm Enterprise Administration and Advertising and marketing Educator for College of Illinois Extension on the time.
“Watching Mother and every little thing she did gave me great empathy for what girls had been going by means of on the farm operation,” says Hambleton.
In Annie’s Challenge lessons, skilled facilitators present secure harbor, connection, discovery, and shared experiences. Vetted instructors and presenters ship unbiased research-based info to small, dynamic teams of ladies.
The core of Annie’s Challenge are two programs that handle the 5 areas of danger recognized by USDA. The “Managing for In the present day and Tomorrow” course addresses creating enterprise plans, retirement, succession, transition and property planning. “Know Your Numbers – Know Your Choices” takes a deeper dive into monetary literacy.
“Impressed by Annie’s” programs have been added that target explicit pursuits of an viewers, conferences, or hands-on occasions.
Further occasions are being deliberate to rejoice the twentieth anniversary, with updates offered at www.anniesproject.org or on Fb. Sponsors can contact doris@anniesproject.org to be taught methods to be a part of the initiative and the celebration.
For a current Turf Journal article entitled, “Mission Unstoppable: Girls in Timber,” click on right here.
