ABOVE: Lindsey Diegnau, Elsa Thompson, Jorvik Jensen and Cohl Becker fill Easter eggs with candy for Granada Huntley East Chain's Egg My Yard program. Submitted photo.

GRANADA–This Saturday the Granada Huntley East Chain (GHEC) FFA will be conducting a new service project in which students prepare and hide Easter eggs ahead of the holiday. The project is one of several new service projects started by the FFA chapter this year.

During the chapter’s “Egg my Yard” event nine FFA members will visit 18 households in Granada, Fairmont and Blue Earth. Registration for the event was open to households that live within 10 miles of Granada. In advance of the event 20 FFA students helped pack over 700 eggs with candy. The project itself was chosen and planned by GHEC’s FFA members who were inspired by similar service projects at other schools.

Aubrey Benoit is a 7th grade FFA member who’s also been elected to a leadership position in the chapter next year.

“I feel like it would be a good way for kids to spend Easter and it’s way easier on the parents,” said Benoit.

Organizers plan for the project to become an annual occurrence; after this year’s eggs have been distributed, they will be retrieved and reused for next year’s event.

Another project the chapter started this school year is writing and sending cards to residents in assisted living facilities. These are written and submitted each month, particularly around holidays, and on April 4 members visited the residents they’ve written to and played a game of bingo.

Earlier this year during National FFA Week members of the chapter helped pack food aid which was sent to Haiti.

McKenzie Wagelie is the agriculture teacher at GHEC and has managed its FFA chapter since January.

She said introducing the new projects was a way for the chapter to fulfill a fundamental component of FFA’s agenda.

“One of the foundations of (FFA) is community service. The motto is learning to do, doing to learn, learning to live and living to serve; that end part is all about serving our community, our school and anyone who’s needing service in any way,” said Wagelie.

In addition, Wagelie sees the projects as a way for the chapter to give back to the community.

“It’s all building a stronger community because we wouldn’t have an FFA chapter if it weren’t for our community,” said Wagelie.

While the chapter is now beginning to wind down its operations for the year, later this summer students will run their annual car wash and work on road cleanup. Once students return to school next fall they will continue to search for new projects, but the organization’s student leadership will have the final say regarding what projects are undertaken.

“We’re always willing to take on projects. If people have ideas we’ll take them into consideration but it always comes down to what the kids want to do because it is a student led organization,” said Wagelie.