5 minute read
Rural Youth
Rural youth focus Keeping rural youth positive through the pandemic and beyond is vital. Club members consider some of the latest initiatives
Peter Jackson, Farmers Club Honorary Vice President
Dear Editor,
I WAS very interested to read your Spring Journal piece about a new Rural Youth Project, having myself been involved in rural youth development in one way or another for about 40 years.
I was for many years from 1980 onwards in the non-executive management of the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (England & Wales) and was their President in 2000. I see the YFCs with their local, national and international involvements as an essential and natural well established organisation throughout the UK for bringing farming and non-farming rural young people together and motivating them in the ways of the countryside.
Rural youth projects
In 1991, in conjunction with the NFYFC, I was one of the co-sponsors and the appeal director and a trustee of the Rural Youth Trust (now chaired by Farmers Club Committee member John Lee), whose task is to back good rural youth projects.
On the back of my YFC experience and the strength of the Farmers Club Under 30s section, when I became Chairman of the Club in 1996 my first priority was to organise the Club’s highly successful Rural Youth Conference at Moreton Morrell College in Warwickshire, which was attended by 120 young people. The Duke of Westminster flew in overnight from the US to give us an inspirational keynote address. Amongst other active achievers leading discussions were Julian Sayers (ex-NFYFC chairman), Jimmy McLean (RBS sponsors), John Lee (also ex-NFYFC Chairman and first English President of the Council of European Young Agriculturalists) and James Cross (Farmers Club Under 30s).
Major contributions
All of these have subsequently made and continue to make major contributions to rural life, as well as within the Farmers Club. The conference was fully reported in the Spring and Royal Show 1996 issues of the Club Journal (Nos 141 & 142) and is well worth a read on the whole subject of rural youth development.
Of particular interest to me personally, through my long Shetland connection, is the case study of Jakob Eunson. I have known Jakob’s father, Ronnie, for very many years – a highly respected farmer with a major input into native breed Shetland sheep wool as well as native cattle – and have enjoyed hearing of Jakob’s growing and considerable recent successes.
RURAL YOUTH PROJECT UPDATE
Coronavirus meant the Rural Youth Project had to adapt its activities. But the energy behind the initiative is undimmed. “We are supporting young people with online webinars and gatherings, a mental health workshop in collaboration with RSABI and Support in Mind Scotland, and sharing weekly updates from young people talking about how Covid19 is affecting them (see below),” explains Jane Craigie, RYP co-founder, Farmers Club member and a participant in the Windsor Leadership Programme thanks to the Farmers Club Charitable Trust. “We also plan to have a series of six-plus webinar events on skills training – leadership, social & commercial enterprise, training mentors, matching mentors to mentees and some
others. Later this year we will resume our plans and host a delayed Ideas Festival (probably November) and a series of Big Ideas’ Workshops – hopefully in September. We hope to make it a ‘roving’ journey, where we take 30 young people from the Borders to the Outer Hebrides to learn from inspiring rural businesses that are thinking and doing differently. “We will continue our podcasts and are feeding our insights into fortnightly calls with the Scottish Government. Later this year, provided Covid19 doesn’t stop us, we will also be teaming up with the Institute of Agricultural Management to run an Ideas Workshop linked to the IAgrM annual conference in November. “A member of the steering committee is also keen to re-run the RYP survey in Wales and the project has started talking to some of the National Parks about how RYP can support them in their youth work in the rural and remote parts of the National Park network.”
RURAL YOUTH TRUST
“Young people are our nation’s greatest asset and voluntary youth organisations, whatever their particular style, play an essential part in the vital areas of self-development and leadership training. With a friendly word, a helping hand and a good example to follow, young people can and will shape their own destiny and that of others less fortunate,” explains RYT Chairman John Lee OBE, newly elected Vice Chairman of the Farmers Club for 2021, who is based in Devon. The Rural Youth Trust supports youth organisations in rural areas of England and Wales with membership aged between 11 and 26 years and primarily focuses on the motivation and training of young people, developing their personalities and individual capacity to play their full part as caring and active members of their rural communities. Further details and a grant application form can
Shetland example
But in Shetland there is another quite outstanding young farming success. Two young ladies barely out of their teens suddenly took on the successful management of the quite considerable Budge family farm some four or five years ago when their father was tragically killed in an on-farm accident. Amy and Kirsty have overcome all the problems so well that two years ago they were chosen as the national BBC Countryfile Programme Farming Personality of the Year. What a wonderful second example of young people in Shetland showing just what they can achieve, whatever the challenges.
The lesson of all this is that, working together, all who care about the rural scene can and must show young people, their parents, their teachers, and the media just what interesting, challenging 21st century jobs there are waiting for them in rural areas. Then the young will come and they will achieve.
Best wishes,
Peter Jackson CBE Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk
be obtained from www.ruralyouthtrust.co.uk
COUNTRY COVIDEOS HELP RURAL YOUNG CONNECT
Covering topics from social isolation to the effect on farming enterprises, the RYP video diary – “Country Covid-eos” – connected rural young people during lockdown. A new ‘Covideo’ each Monday created a series with young people from Scotland, England, Wales and further afield, including Australia, sharing how Coronavirus is impacting them and their community. “We’ve launched ‘Country Covid-eo’ to communicate what is happening to young people in rural areas and how the issues that they already face – such as loneliness and poor connectivity – are being compounded due to isolation,” commented RYP Director, Rebecca Dawes.
