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Hello! I’m Casey Clemons, your Bainbridge High FFA Reporter, and I’m back with some more intel on what our organization has done over the summer.

To start us off, our FFA officers attended a COLT (Chapter Officer Leadership Training) Conference held on the FFA-FCCLA camp grounds in Covington, Ga. While there, Mr. Patrick Grady led outstanding sessions multiple times for the three days we were there. He split up our officers into groups where we didn’t know anyone and which allowed us to interact with others outside of our chapter. Each group had many different tasks they had to complete such us making a poster, writing a skit and a song, and making different lists of things we want to see happen in our organization.

And on the last day, we had to stand up in front of everyone and present our tasks. There was an intense scavenger hunt that the chapters had to complete and at the end of it, there was a huge water balloon fight between everyone! State FFA officers were also there and led groups where we discussed things like tradition and how to be professional. There was a big dance and at the end of it, we had an award ceremony to acknowledge the ones who performed the best in their roles when doing Opening Ceremony. On the last day, we all said our good-byes to our new lifelong friends and headed back home. I say all in all, it was a pretty wonderful experience.

Our FFA Secretary, Faith Taunton, attended the Washington Leadership Conference (WLC) held in Washington D.C. When she first started off on this trip, she didn’t know anybody. Not only are there people going from all over Georgia but there are people from all over the country.

But as soon as the got onto the Georgia bus, she socialized and made many friends from all around the state. Once she got to WLC, everyone was split up into groups of 20 with people from different states.

So, she started from square one: not knowing anybody again. In their groups, they discussed topics such as leadership responsibilities and how they could use those skills and be potential leaders in their communities.

At the WLC programs, they also had many sessions each day where they talked about what they would use from what they’ve learned at WLC and put it towards their chapters and communities as well.

On their last day, they had free time and walked around downtown where they explored the different memorial sites and learned about history from museums. A guest speaker came to the conference and talked about future jobs they could have.

They talked about Living to Serve (LTS) plans to bring back to the community and help change something that they thought could use some work. Faith said she made many friends and still keeps up with them daily. She said “It was an overall great experience and I learned many things about leadership and made lifelong friends.”

And on that note, I leave you with another FFA Fun Fact: About 70 percent of FFA members in the U.S. live in rural or farm areas. Nearly 10 percent live in urban and suburban areas almost 19 percent live in small towns.