VABF Conference Youth Program

By August 23, 2022VABF News

Virginia’s biggest and most informative sustainable farm event is coming up in January 2023! Last year, thanks in large part to a generous donation from Michael Carter Jr., we expanded our youth program and it was wildly successful! This was the brainchild of own Lindsay Newsome and she recruited one of our members, Chris Ercolano, a local Montessori teacher, to help organize this for the parents who attended the 2022 conference. Chris did such a great job that we are not only expanding the program, we have also promoted him to “Youth Program Director” and he has some awesome ideas for our 2023 Conference! Chris needs our help! Michael Carter, Jr. has committed to sponsoring our youth programs again this year. But, we need additional sponsors to cover the expanded and growing programs.

2023 Conference Teen Program!!

For this upcoming year, we are adding a special program just for the teens that will include a social media challenge, a teen hangout room, and a special presentation to run during lunch. Our goal is to engage the teens in what they are inherently good at—social media—to engage them, promote the conference, and to show some of us old-timer farmers how to easily and effectively to use social media. This is where we really need you—our farming community’s support—to contribute so we have a successful program. We need the following for these programs:

  • Volunteers
  • Snacks for both programs
  • Equipment loans to use during the conference: laptop(s) for the teen room for editing & uploading; recording equipment (could include smartphones that aren’t connect to a network), digital camera, mics, etc.; 1 gaming setup; maybe a Roku…

  We cannot wait for this year’s conference and look forward  to seeing you there!