The White County High School Future Farmers of America earned a National Chapter Award with a three-star ranking.
White County FFA Advisor Kim Eller said the the students worked hard to achieve the honor. She said that the student-led organization comes to her for advice, but for the most part, she was able to proudly watch them build their ideas.
“As an advisor, it makes me extremely proud and excited,” Eller said. “Kind of telling them and seeing them and they’re like, oh we wanna do this we wanna do that, I love their ideas they’re always excited about new things. To me, I’m really thrilled they get the opportunity to share what they do with everyone else.”
Eller said that to earn their three-star ranking, the students had to build their program largely from the ground up. For them to reach national consideration, the students first had to apply to be evaluated on a state level, Eller said. It was after they received a gold grade from the state, Eller said they realized they would be considered nationally.
“Well, it’s something that they definitely have to be committed to. Our whole goal this year was just to complete the application. It’s a 20-something-page application, so our goal was just to complete the application since it was our first year,” Eller said. “We were thrilled when we actually got to go on to national level.”
As a part of maintaining the FFA, the students had to constantly network with other members of the community, Eller said. This includes acquiring sponsorships from other community members to not run out of school funding for the FFA program, Eller said. It would be several of these sponsored community projects that the students would choose to showcase for state and national grading, Eller said.
“Because we are a small rural community, agriculture is heavily involved, it kind of shows that our students are reaching beyond White County and kind of going above and beyond what they’re asked to do,” Eller said. “And that they are becoming leaders of the next generation.”
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