Discovering Possibilities - Noah Haynes

My name is Noah, I am 15 years old and I go to Waynesboro high school. The way that I first discovered youth leaders in agriculture is through one of my teachers. Her name is Nicole Barrows and she is the agriculture/horticulture teacher for Waynesboro highschool. That is the first agriculture class I have ever taken and it changed my life. At first I was not really into it, Then when I started to pay more attention it got really interesting. Throughout the year in the class we took field trips to the Waynesboro education farm, and that took it to the next level. My teacher saw that I was very invested in Agriculture and she also saw that summer was coming up. She saw this as an opportunity for me to learn more about agriculture. So she told me about this job called YLA and I was interested in it. I went in for a job interview and got the job. On the first day I was kind of hesitant but later on it kept getting better. 

There are many reasons why YLA has changed my life but I am going to only list three. The first reason why it has helped me is the leadership it has brought into my life.This summer I had the opportunity to work with the summer camp. Leading the groups and organising the activities has boosted my leadership skill tremendously. On Wednesdays we would also have volunteers, I would have to show and explain the task and that would help me with my communication skills. The second reason YLA has changed my life is, they made me fall in love with nature. On the first day I really didn't know what a weed was. If you ask me I can almost identify anything on our farm. The third and final reason is all the new people I met throughout the course of the job. On the first day I did not know a single person. At first it was really awkward but over time we all got used to each other. At the end of the day I think that Project grows has really changed my life as a person, and I will never forget this experience.