Annie’s Challenge, a nationwide non-profit to coach and empower girls in agriculture, is celebrating 20 years since its founding. Right this moment, 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 recollections of these early conferences and the influence Annie’s Challenge has had on their farms and lives this month to commemorate the milestone.
Annie’s Challenge relies on the lifetime of a farm girl, Annie Fleck, who spent her lifetime studying how you can 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 Educator for College of Illinois Extension on the time.
“Watching Mother and all the pieces she did gave me great empathy for what girls have been going by means of on the farm operation,” says Hambleton.
In Annie’s Challenge lessons, skilled facilitators present protected harbor, connection, discovery, and shared experiences. Vetted instructors and presenters ship unbiased research-based info to small, dynamic teams of girls.
The core of Annie’s Challenge are two programs that deal with the 5 areas of danger recognized by USDA. The “Managing for Right this moment and Tomorrow” course addresses growing 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 specific pursuits of an viewers, conferences, or hands-on occasions.
Extra occasions are being deliberate to have a good time the twentieth anniversary, with updates offered at www.anniesproject.org or on Fb. Sponsors can contact doris@anniesproject.org to study methods to be a part of the initiative and the celebration.
For a current Turf Journal article entitled, “Mission Unstoppable: Girls in Bushes,” click on right here.
