(By FFA Reporter Charli Goff) – Each year, the Southwest District and Iowa FFA officers plan and facilitate Greenhand Fire Up Conferences for FFA members in the Southwest District. The workshops were leadership focused with an emphasis on the experiences that occur in the lives of beginning high school students These workshops are geared toward engaging members into FFA as the year kicks up. Atlantic welcomed 29 FFA chapters and 362 from all over the Southwest District on Wednesday, October 12th.

Atlantic FFA member Dylan Comes, the Southwest State Treasurer for the Iowa FFA Association, helped with other officers prepare and facilitated workshops of: authenticity, balancing priorities, communication, and FFA opportunities – in order to provide the first-year FFA members with skills they would use both within and outside of FFA. Comes said “It was great to see all of the younger members interacting with each other from a facilitators point of view.” “It was fun to meet new people and I made a lot of new friends. I also learned about FFA.” Miraylie Stuart.

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The goal was to engage FFA members in learning about the tools that would allow them to be successful in anything they are part of through high school and beyond. The goal was to engage FFA members in learning about the tools that would allow them to be successful in anything they are part of through high school and beyond. “It’s an easy way to learn the basics of FFA. I also had a lot of fun meeting new people” said Atlantic FFA freshman Mckenna Schroeder. Olivia Olson said, “It was fun meeting new people and talking to other FFA members to see what they do in their chapter.”