Mia's Delegate Experience

“Life is hard, everyone is tired, so let’s get to work.” The words of Ridge Hughbanks in his retiring address. His message and words affected me deeply along with hundreds of other FFA members. As I reflect on my experience as serving as a national delegate for the state of Iowa, I would say that most of us were tired but we also got a lot of work done.

Doing into national convention I didn’t know what to expect completely. I had been to convention twice before, once competing and once as an attendant, but I had never experienced any delegate process at any level before. So I was a little skeptical of what to expect and how the process worked. However, I soon realized the importance and impact a delegate has on the National FFA Organization.

The delegate process starts with everyone getting placed into six different committees, with a topic and focus around each one. This year I served on the membership experience committee with Natalie. The goal of each committee is to work together to form three recommendations for the National FFA Board of Directors to look at. With that, our committee worked all day to come up with these three recommendations: alterations to the jacket for disabled people, lowering affiliation cost, and a relaunch of “We are FFA” to be more inclusive. Each report would then get brought up to all delegates in the business session the next morning. 

The delegate business session was very interesting to be part of and I learned a lot. It was interesting to see how other state associations go about the process and how people voice there opinions and thoughts. We started the session by adopting a set of rules for the delegate process and then went into voting on the constitutions and by-laws to aline with the new federal charter. Once that had passed we went into the six different committee reports. Where each one was read, amended and debated upon, and voted over. It was interesting to see the different opinions come out from states even when most of them had at least one delegate that worked on creating the report. After all, reports passed, the business session was over and we got to experience the rest of the convention. By going to the expo and attending all of the sessions.

One of my favorite parts was cheering on Iowa FFA members as they crossed the stage. The time and effort that each one of them put in to win or receive an award is outstanding and very well deserved. When I was a freshman in high school, I got the honor to be recognized on stage for an agriscience fair project a partner and I had completed. To this day I remember the screams and cheers that came from Iowa delegates and the impact that had on me. I only hope that I did the same for members on the stage.

This trip to the National FFA Convention is something that I am very grateful for and will never forgot. From the long car ride, to late nights, everything we did was fun, eventful, and we learned something and grew as people. I am honored to have gotten this opportunity and to see the passion and drive that the State Officers have for this organization and how they want to continuously help others!

Cheers,

Mia Gibson

Northwest Vice President

Northeast District