Executing a Chapter Community Service Project

BY: CATI FLORY GILMER HIGH SCHOOL AGRICULTURE SCIENCE TEACHER

EXECUTING A CHAPTER COMMUNITY SERVICE PROJECT PART I - THE PLANNING PROCESS

Planning and completing a community service project requires time, effort, and commitment.

All of our chapter service planning begins at our officer retreat each summer, where our students plan the year’s activities and events. Our advisors begin by asking about needs they see in the community. One of the first groups our officers were excited to serve was their former elementary school teachers; resulting in the “Helping Our Day Ones” activity. The primary focus was giving back to the teachers who helped shape our members into the young men and women they are today. From there, an officer volunteered to be in charge of the service event and called our elementary school principal to see what we could do to help the teachers. Once we contacted GES and determined what we could help with, our officers met with our chapter’s citizenship committee to determine when and how the project would take place. After discussing the options given to use by the principals, it was determined the best way our members could help was to help teachers decorate their classrooms and to move in school supplies for the 2019-2020 school year.

Next, the officers were in charge of securing a date for the service activity to take place.

On the day teachers came back from summer vacation, an army of Gilmer FFA members were waiting for them, ready to serve by helping get their classrooms ready for their students. Our members loved getting the opportunity to reconnect with their elementary teachers, who had done so much for them when they attended Gilmer Elementary School.

It was also a great way for our members to make connections with our new teachers and explain to them

what our chapter is about. It

was a gateway to invite the activities that high schoolers time, attire, purpose, contact new teachers to a few of our find relevant and interesting, information, and supplies public events throughout the which allows us to have needed, just to name a few. school year, including our greater participation in the From there, our committee Gilmer FFA Christmas Party projects. is better prepared to put the and Chili Cook-Off. plan into motion. The advisor is a A few words of advice for facilitator, not a planner. teachers struggling to plan As FFA advisors, we have a “WE TRY EXTREMELY and execute a community service project are: tremendous workload just within the day-to-day needs of our chapters. So, why HARD TO LET OUR OFFICERS

Let the service activity give ourselves more work AND COMMITTEE be student-driven. We try extremely hard to let our officers and committee by adding planning a service event to our schedule? Your officers and committee chairs MEMBERS BE THE PRIMARY PLANNERS members be the primary were selected for a reason, OF SERVICE planners of service projects because they tend to have a better understanding of let them lead. Have a specific plan. As PROJECTS BECAUSE THEY TEND TO what students will want to our officers and committee HAVE A BETTER be involved in. By allowing students to come up with ideas, such as which groups chairman sit down to plan an event, the advisors give them a step-by-step sheet to UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT STUDENTS we will serve or what type fill out while they brainstorm WILL WANT TO BE of service we will participate in, we end up with service for an event. This step-bystep plan includes a date, INVOLVED IN.”