The Ainsworth FFA Chapter has been quite active this year. This year, we have an increase in members from the past couple of years. We have just over 50 members. We have done many activities for the good of our members, our chapter, our school, and community.

Every August, our chapter has our River Raft Party for current and potential members. We take a day and go tubing and tanking down the Niobrara River. We follow this up by grilling hamburgers for dinner. We have found this to be a great way to kick off the year and get members acquainted to each other while having some fun. We also have our students participate in the LSE and CDE contests. We feel that it is a great way to educate our members in agriculture and help them build skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.

Our chapter also does several big fund raisers. One of these is our chapter fruit sales. Nearly all of our members participate in selling fruit. Also, we hold a hamburger feed at homecoming, and a potato bake at a basketball game. Our main fundraiser is our Hired Hand Auction. Local businesses and ranchers bid on our FFA members for one day’s worth of work. This year we raised over $6,000 at our Hired Hand Auction.

Not only does our chapter do activities to benefit itself, but we also like to give back to our community. During National FFA Week, our chapter got together with our local Pizza Hut and Subway to provide gift certificates to winners of radio trivia dealing with agriculture and the FFA.

Also, our chapter holds an Ag Day Parade. This parade is for our elementary students. Reports back from the elementary indicate that this is a fun way for the students to learn about agriculture, and is a big hit amongst the elementary students.

This looks to be like a great idea to expand on in the future and maybe incorporate local businesses to help with our parade.

With the rising concern of the environment, our chapter has started doing some projects to help clean up our area.

One of these projects that we have recently started is collection of inner-tubes. It might not seem like a large problem, but there are more wasted inner-tubes sitting around farms and ranches than one might think.

With the help from the Valentine recycling center, our chapter has collected roughly 6,000 pounds of unused inner-tubes that otherwise would have gone to the landfill.

Our chapter has become more and more involved in the past couple of years. Our advisor, Roger Lechtenberg, has been advocating member involvement, and it is starting to show in our members.

With our growing rate of membership, we look to expand on what we have already accomplished, and also incorporate other ideas into our POA.