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A partnership with an Indianapolis youth program has provided important opportunities for inner-city youth, but it’s given Indiana Farm Bureau some new opportunities as well.

The Felege Hiywot Center (FHC) provides a variety of youth programming including its Youth Farm Initiative, which helps high school students learn real-world life and business principles while serving the community and growing sustainable crops.

“The Felege Hiywot Center and Indiana Farm Bureau’s partnership has led inner-city youth to be exposed to new advocacy and leadership skills,” said Lindi Kocher, INFB education coordinator. “Our focus is to provide a window into policy-level leadership.”

Leadership development is one of the key components of FHC. The center’s founder and executive director, Aster Bekele, became a U.S. citizen in 1981, but she was born in Ethiopia. She named it “Felege Hiywot” because in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia, this means “Looking for Direction to Life.”

For more on the Felege Hiywot Center’s partnership with INFB, email Lindi Kocher, lkocher@infb.org.

Among the activities sponsored by INFB at the Felege Hiywot Center are:

• Developing plans for students to experience an advocacy day, much like the advocacy day already in place for Indiana FFA members. Students were trained in communicating and building rapport with legislators.
• Training in advocacy and parliamentary procedure, as well as a mock committee hearing.
• Visiting the Indiana Statehouse to tour the building, meet with elected officials, and sit in the Ways and Means Committee room to perform their mock hearing, which was on the topic of food insecurity.
• Visiting the Chicago High School of Ag Sciences, with the help of the Marion County Farm Bureau, to see agricultural education on a scale much larger than can be experienced in FHC’s garden beds.