New challenges for rural education

My 20 years of involvement with the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) can be laid at the door of Ronnie Black of Collessie who persuaded me to attend a meeting at Howe of Fife Rugby Club in 1980.

That’s where I learned more about the new rural education charity which was being set up, and how it would work.

After volunteering for a short time, I jumped at the chance to become a project co-ordinator when the job was created. I didn’t know then that this charity, which I was keen to support, would become such a large part of my family life.

My children have grown up with RHET and my husband Ian has learnt when he needs to make his own tea!

I’ve always known how lucky I was to be brought up on a farm and I wanted to share with others. There is nothing better than seeing a child’s face when they watch a ewe lambing or a cow being milked – all the things we take for granted.

All our host farmers have a similar passion to myself and the reward comes when you hear a child (or teacher) understand where their food comes from and say: “That was the best school visit ever”.

Since the beginning of 2012, RHET Fife have hosted 980 farm visits, 965 classroom talks and held 33 food & farming events with a total of over 56,000 young people.

Every year the numbers we achieve have increased, so much so that in January 2017, Angela Mill joined RHET Fife as assistant co-ordinator.

Angela shares my passion for educating young people about food, farming and the countryside, and has become an extremely valued member of the RHET Fife “tag team”.

However, the most valuable asset RHET has are the volunteers.

Without these willing helpers there would be no RHET. They give up their valuable time to share their knowledge of the agricultural industry and their work with the consumers of the future. We have been extremely lucky to have so many volunteers throughout Fife (although we can never have enough) with involvement from Fife and Kinross Young Farmers clubs, SRUC, NFU Scotland as well as the many farming families, retired farmers and those working in the agriculture industry, all of whom have given up their time. I cannot thank them all enough for their support over the last 20 years. The funders are also extremely important as we cannot continue the good work without funding.

There have been so many highlights over the years, the main one being the faces of pupils when they learn something new which will stay with them for life. I have made friends with the other extremely hard-working co-ordinators throughout Scotland (both past and present) who all share my passion for food and farming education. Working with RHET is a bit like being in Young Farmers, only 30 something years later.

The Covid-19 restrictions have meant that employment contracts with RHET have had to be cancelled, although the RHET Fife Board are keeping both Angela and I working on reduced hours so that social media channels stay active and emails are answered.

We still don’t know for sure when schools will require the services of RHET again, but by keeping RHET Fife running we will be in a better position when schools reopen and are ready to engage with our services.

We plan to continue with visits and talks in the future but for now we aim to do it digitally with live farm visits and videos.

If RHET is to continue to thrive and build on the success of the last 20 years, we need more people to get involved at a number of levels.

We all need to collectively take the fantastic opportunity that RHET offers to farmers to speak directly to and influence consumers, telling the true story of Scottish farming. For me RHET is not just a job it is a lifestyle!

We plan to continue with visits and talks in the future but for now we aim to do it digitally

Farm visits are a valuable way to educate young people about farming and where their food comes from.