Howard Orschell Endowment Funds Local FFA
The Howard Orschell Endowment, a field of interest endowment at the Foundation, recently awarded funds to the CHS FFA to help pay for membership dues. The endowment was created in memory of Howard Orschell to promote youth involvement in agriculture. Howard Orschell grew up in Franklin County during the 1920’s. Howard married Alice after he served in the Navy during World War II. He and Alice bought a farm in the 1940’s and raised four children together. Howard loved to farm and did his entire life. Howard passed away in 2008. His daughter, Beth, created an endowment to carry on her daddy’s love of agriculture. Field of interest endowments can support a broad area of interests such as education, the arts, services or programs for youth or the elderly, environmental projects, health, recreational purposes, or civic affairs. The Foundation will direct the distributions to the most appropriate programs within the field(s) designated by the donors.
Michael Biehl and Morgan Hauger, FFA President and Vice-President, described how the endowment helps their club. “Every year, the Connersville FFA Chapter is required to pay dues to state and national FFA. Our chapter is an affiliate chapter, this means every student enrolled in an agriculture class becomes a FFA member without paying dues. However, our chapter is still required to pay our state and national dues. To accomplish this, each year we seek sponsors throughout our community. The Fayette County Foundation generously donated two hundred dollars to our chapter. This money will allow us to continue to be actively involved on both state and national levels.”
The CHS FFA is an agricultural science program and has 150 active AET student accounts and is led by Gabe Nobbe. Students develop their potential for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education. Money from the endowment was used toward district, State, and national FFA dues. One of Nobbe’s goals this year is to make it so every student in an agriculture class is a member of FFA, which is a new program of FFA, and students are not allowed to pay the dues themselves.