My Organization

For this week's blog, I have decided to complete the third option, which was "finding your organization to represent."
For me, it was pretty easy to choose my organization. I work for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture as the Horse Extension Specialist. I work with the youth and adults of Arkansas in mostly horse related activities. Thus, UA - Division of Agriculture is who I will be writing on behalf of.

While working on my needs statement, I came across this youtube video. It definelty stresses the importance of educating youth in the area of farm safety. The part that makes it even more stunning is the shear probabilty that most of the accidents in the video deal almost primarily with adults (although it is strictly my opinion - not based on facts). And we all know that youth/teenagers working around or with farm equipment are historically much less careful. Kind of scary in my opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhj3SmHB19I

More to come later that will discuss specifics of needs statment.

New Thoughts

After doing a little research and putting together some more thoughts, I have decided to go another route in the two grants I will be attempting to get funded this semester. Originally I was pretty vague in some of the things I am hoping to do. If anyone wants, they can read my previous blog and learn a little about some of the things I originally planned to do. However, as I mentioned earlylier, I have strayed from that some. The two things I would like to focus on now will be youth farm safety and youth horse safety. At some point I would also like to tackle the topic of all the unwanted unwanted and wild horses. But that will be at a later time haha. I also mentioned in my bio that I work for the Unversity of Arkansas Division of Agriculture as the Extension Horse Specialist. So, I feel these two things are extremely important and certainly worth developing.

I will spend the rest of this blog discussing my interests in youth farm safety and some of the oppurtunities existing there. I will spend my next blog discussing the youth horse safety opportunities. I gathered some information from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that discusses a grant they offer that deals specifically with youth farm safety. The following is taken directly from the USDA website: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/youthfarmsafetyeducationandcertification.cfm?pg=6

The Youth Farm Safety Education and Certification Program (YFSECP) supports national efforts to deliver timely and pertinent information dealing with the training of youth that are seeking employment or are already imployed in agriculture production. The program has critical ties to the current regulations for youth employment in agriculture, especially the exemptions provided in 29 CFR Part 570, subpart E-1 for youth under the age of 16 employed in some agricultural occupations having obtained certification.
There's obviously much more to this but will have to end this blog for now. During my next blog I will spend some time discussing the importance, justification and impact of this grant. I will also spend sometime disucssing my other grant dealing with horse safety for youth.

Grant Ideas

My first grant would probably be to develop educational materials specifically for judging teams and youth career preparation in the equine industry.
The second grant would be to help me develop and deliver educational seminars and workshops for youth and adults in the horse industry. This would include bringing in industry experts.
I will expand upon this in the near future.