EDUCATIONAL work carried out at Rylands Farm near Sherborne has won top-level recognition.
The farm, under its Future Roots scheme, has been hosting young people for the last three years and the work was honoured by the Bayer/Farming and Countryside Education Awards in London.
It won the Countryside Careers Award and followed this up with The Very Best in Farming Education Award.
Julie Plumley, director of Future Roots, said: “It’s nice to get recognition for all the hard work of our staff, volunteers, participants and the schools who refer them to us.
“We started Future Roots in order to support teenagers living in rural parts of Dorset who had challenges in their lives, because I felt that they were being very misunderstood and had few connections to the countryside that surrounded them.
“We started off with just three small groups and now we host between 80 and 100 young people a week, which includes children as young as five who come to our after school clubs and young people who have special educational needs.
“While we want all of our work to be connected to farming, I want to include everything that my dad way able to do on his farm before he retired. His animal care was second to none, but he was also a plumber, an electrician and a builder.
“He was multi-talented, although he didn’t have any qualifications and left school at 14, and so today we work to bring out each young person’s individual qualities and then the skills that they each have.
“Most of these young people are referred to us from their schools because of behaviour problems. But there is a key to every single person if you treat them as individuals and every single person that comes here wants to learn.
“By offering them as many possibilities as possible, whether its agriculture, horticulture, building, plumbing or cooking, you will always find something that inspires them. But it is the contact with the animals that works for nearly everyone that comes here. Working with animals has an element of risk attached to it and animals will also show you unconditional love and they cannot judge you.
“These qualities can help to build personal responsibility and improve people’s self esteem.
“Today, we have three different programmes for young people and we have also started to host adults as well as older people who are suffering from dementia.
“Some of our young people are referred into our Future Farmers programme that allows them to gain a City & Guilds award that nearly all use to go on to Kingston Maurward College or into employment or apprenticeships in farming and other professions.
“While these qualifications are important, the main benefit of Future Roots is that it gives them the confidence to say to themselves that they have the right skills and work ethic to succeed even when others have told them otherwise.”
Future Roots is a social enterprise company, limited by public guarantee, which operates as a not-for-profit venture.
Source: The Western Gazette 29 September 2011 (originally published on the blog on 03 October 2011)
