2019 ASHS Annual Conference

Seed Your Future- the movement to promote horticulture and inspire more young people to pursue careers working with plants - launched its first campaign in April 2018 focused on middle-schoolers. In partnership with Scholastic, BLOOM! utilizes eye-catching, fact-based content delivered both inside and outside of the classroom. In the first year, almost one million 6th-8th graders were reached with the program. (http://www.scholastic.com/BLOOM). In early 2019, we launched our new career exploration tool highlighting almost 100 careers in the horticulture industry (https://www.seedyourfuture.org/careers). In 2019, SYF will continue and expand the middle-school program, with a goal to reach 1.5 million more students. We also are launching our next audience campaign - colleges and universities. With that goal in mind, Seed Your Future is hosting a national summit of the two and four-year college and university horticulture program leaders and student recruiters in June 2019. Leaders will share student recruitment promising practices and success stories. Attendees will have an opportunity to engage and interact with industry leaders to understand what skills and experience they need from students graduating from 2- and 4-year college and university horticulture programs. The oral presentation will provide more detail on the BLOOM! movement and will provide ideas for using SYF materials in college and university recruiting efforts. (https://www.SeedYourFuture.org)