Service in the Southeast

The Riverton FFA chapter brings service to their community and receives opportunities in return.

With year-round projects highlighting agriculture’s role in daily life, Riverton thrives in supporting their rural community in southeast Kansas.

“In a small community, being visible is incredibly important,” says Jacob Larison, ag ed instructor and FFA Advisor at Riverton High School for the past 22 years. “If the community is aware of what the chapter is doing, more opportunities will find our members.”

Ongoing and active involvement with the community allows Riverton to bring curriculum and activities to life.

“Looking for opportunities and keeping your eyes open to the needs of the community allows our chapter to identify ways that we can make a difference,” says Larison, who was also raised in the area.

Riverton FFA Chapter has 75 members in grades 9-12.

“Our chapter is awesome, very fun and interactive; and there are different things you can do within the FFA,” says member Karlee McPhail. “I think it’s fun to be able to help out the community. It’s a great aspect of the FFA.”

Meat to the Community

Riverton recently completed a project to raise hogs and donate the products back into the community.

“We purchased the hogs in the fall when they each weighed approximately 25 pounds,” Larison says. “We fed out the hogs until we had gained over 200 pounds each.”

A local meat locker processed the hogs, and the meat from three of them was donated to a local food bank.

“We delivered over 350 lbs of pork chops, sausage, bacon and ground pork,” Larison says.

Story by Lucas Shivers

“Students worked with the hogs regularly to weigh them and learned how to handle the animals. Many worked with hogs for the first time.”

While some FFA chapters tend to rely on the community to support the chapter through fundraisers, Riverton shared that they hope to continually give support back.

“Knowing they were going to feed people was a huge plus,” says McPhail. “We raised the pigs and got them fattened up to go to food boxes for people who are not as fourtate.”

Service is Elementary

Each spring, Riverton students work with preschool students to learn about eggs and chicks. FFA members also completed a planting activity in the greenhouse for elementary students.

“We taught them how to transplant geraniums and sent each of them home with a plant,” Larison says.

Riverton has worked for two years to make improvements to the school’s playground and received a National FFA Living to Serve grant to invest in the project.

“We also adopted 10 elementary students this year at Christmas time and spent over $1,000 on toys and clothing for them,” Larison says.

Recently, the first-year members worked with 4th grade students to teach ag literacy as it relates to the dairy industry.

“It is important that FFA is involved in the community since agriculture is a huge industry,” McPhail says. “Without FFA and agriculture, people wouldn’t have food or know the ways to grow crops.”

“These different experiences all allow our members to get involved in something that is real and makes a difference to others,” Larison says. “Doing so brings life to their school day.”

Larison reflected his pride in seeing former members taking on various roles in the community.

“While we perform community service primarily for the instant impact of the event, it is rewarding to see that our members take those experiences with them and make a difference as adults,” Larison says.