FFA Inside the Emblem: Clear Lake

135 members
Clear Lake, Wisconsin
Polk County

Tell us about your chapter. The Clear Lake FFA Chapter is a well-known organization in our community. We love sharing our experiences in FFA with other members and the community. We have a strong, kind and supporting chapter from all perspectives. Our members love trying new challenges and going out of their comfort zone. We always push our members to go to new conferences or try out a different competition. The Clear Lake FFA Chapter is a family and everyone has each other’s backs throughout their time in FFA.

How does your chapter volunteer in the community throughout the year? Each year we strive to give back to our community. We have always cleaned the roadside on our town’s highway each year. During Christmas, we love ringing bells at our local grocery store and welcoming people into the store with our smiles.

What fundraisers does your chapter do throughout the year? Which is the most successful? Our chapter does an annual fruit sale in the fall. Our community loves buying products from our students to help our FFA chapter. The fruit sales are always our No. 1 fundraiser for both benefiting our chapter and the most looked forward to in our community. In the springtime, we also provide a strawberry sale that our members love participating in. Another annual event we hold is our community pancake breakfast. The officer team cooks and serves guests. Each year at our town’s festival, Clear Lake Days, the FFA alumni along with FFA members staff a cheese curd stand. We enjoy providing homemade delicious Wisconsin cheese curds to our town, and they are highly looked for at the event.

What are the biggest events of the year? Our biggest events for our members each year would be our Food for America Day and FFA Awards Banquet. The Food for America Day is an event we put on for elementary students at a local farm. FFA members set up various stations with livestock, crops and other ag topics to teach to students. We also take them on a tour of the farm. It is a fun day for both our FFA members and our friends at the elementary school. Our annual FFA Banquet takes place in April and is where we award our members with a variety of FFA degrees and chapter proficiency awards for their projects and recognize individuals and teams that competed in events throughout the year. It is a big event and one that is anticipated throughout the year.

Another big hit for our chapter was donkey basketball. This event took place in our high school and the stands were full. We fundraised at this event to send members to the Washington Leadership Conference. We loved watching different staff and students ride the donkeys across the gym. We had amazing reviews and compliments from the community.

What is unique about your chapter? Our chapter is unique in that we have a diverse background of students and many members are heavily involved in many areas of our school. For most of our membership, FFA is not the only club. Many members are three-sport athletes; student council members; Family, Career and Community Leaders of America members; National Honor Society members; and 4-H members. Many attend youth groups and church activities, community clubs and more. We enjoy being involved in multiple activities and, in a smaller school and town, we all tend to get involved as much as we can.

When was your chapter founded and how has it evolved? Our chapter was founded in 1936 and started as many FFA chapters did — focusing on the boys living and working on the farms in the area.  Over the years, we have seen the program grow to include multiple FFA advisors and teach about many agricultural subject areas beyond the family farm. We added an FFA alumni and supporters chapter in the 1970s (that is still a very active part of our chapter’s success) and opened membership to women in the 1960s. Our FFA chapter now has more than 100 members and is about 50% of our school’s total population. Girls hold a majority of the leadership roles in our chapter and the chapter as a whole is about half male, half female.  While we are still very rooted in agriculture, we have a big focus on leadership, career skills (for both ag and non-ag careers) and community service.