This year’s Rural Ontario Institute’s Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program Gala set a record for the amount of money raised to support the program.
Leadership Programs Director, Gabrielle Ferguson, says Victoria Berry and Jaime Carson, from the 2019 class, co-chaired the event and brought a whole new look to it.
“So they approached it with a golf tournament and a Dream Gala and even the Dream Gala was in a new way. It had a sit down dinner with it and it was really about getting people out to see each other after the pandemic and bringing together people from the ag sector together to support leadership in agriculture.”
Ferguson says the event raised over $105,000 and really raised the bar for future classes. Ferguson says the money will be used to continue to support the program.
“There’s seminars around the Province. There’s a North American Study Tour and there’s an international Study Tour. So those funds are used in multiple different ways to support Ag. Sector leadership. There’s also a reserve fund for people who need some financial help to be able to take the program. So the funds are used in a number of different ways to support ag sector leadership.”
Ferguson says it’s also about continuing to bring in the correct curriculum in leadership to make sure they’re staying advanced and getting to sites around the Province that are teaching them new technologies or showing them different ways in which leadership is showing up and that could be something like financial management or succession planning or innovation in how to attract work force.
