USDA Announces Four Grant for Youth Farm Safety Education
News Release
Contact:
Scott Elliott, CSREES Staff, (202) 720-7185
Pritable Version
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2006 - Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner
today announced four grants totaling more than $400,000 to train young
people who work on farms about safety rules.
"More than a third of all agricultural related injuries that occur to kids under the age of 20 are classified as work-related," Conner said. "These grants will help teach our young people to safely work in the agriculture industry."
This year's grants focus on reaching underserved and/or minority youth. The grants will also promote use of the North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks, a resource to assist parents in assigning farm jobs to their children. Recently developed curriculum from previous years' grants can be found at: http://www.agsafety4youth.info.
The Youth Farm Safety Education and Certification Program was initially funded in 2001 and has awarded 14 grants totaling $2.7 million since then. The program seeks to support standards for employment of youth in agricultural machinery operation, to address special needs of all young workers, and to determine agricultural employment trends and skills of youth.
The fiscal year 2006 grants were awarded to:
1) Kansas State University, $119,791, to create farm safety curriculum focused on livestock safety that can be used with 4-H or other youth groups and seeks to involve youth with disabilities.
2) Ohio State University, $120,000, to develop and implement farm safety curriculum for use with Anabaptist (Mennonite and Amish) youth.
3) Purdue University, $68,158, to create a user-friendly portal to be located on the National Hazardous Occupations Safety Training in Agriculture Web site. The portal will generate age-appropriate task sheets based on user input.
4) Purdue University $113,750, to evaluate the effectiveness of the Gearing Up for Safety curriculum for use with black students seeking AgHO (Hazardous Orders for Agriculture) certification.
USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) administers this program. The agency advances knowledge for agriculture, the environment, human health and well-being, and communities by supporting research, education, and extension programs in the Land-Grant University System and other partner organizations. For more information, visit http://www.csrees.usda.gov. |
