Year in Review With Colorado Ag Foundation

As 2016 draws to close, the Colorado Ag Foundation Executive Director Bette Blinde shares a year in review with the many activities of the foundation to improve ag literacy in the state, specifically targeting teachers and their classrooms.

Blinde says from March through the May is when the Colorado Literacy Project happens

Blinde: "We have farmers and ranchers that go into the classroom and read a book about agriculture to the students and then talk about agriculture with the students and encourage the teachers to teach about agriculture using literacy as a tool."

She continues with more about the two Summer Ag Institutes for teachers that happen in June.

Blinde: "We had 50 teachers in attendance at those. Those we take teachers that have little or no ag background and share with them a bunch of information about agriculture. We tour a variety of different ag operations which show the diversity of Colorado agriculture."

In addition there is the student newspaper or the Colorado Reader series that comes out seven times of year and focuses on different aspects of agriculture. There are also activity books that distributed to teachers across state. Blinde says that they are always looking for new volunteers, especially for the Literacy Project.

Blinde: "We do rely on volunteers because we had about 12 schools that we could reach this last year because we didn't have enough volunteers to go into the classroom."

In addition to volunteering your time and talent to Colorado Ag Foundation, you may want to consider a donation to this worthy 501 C3 to assist in its good works it provides towards ag literacy.