110 Principles of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Awards and Recognition Having a quality personal SAE can be reward enough for all of your hard work and dedication, but there are also other ways to be recognized for meeting your SAE goals. Profi ciency awards are awards given by the National FFA Organization on the local, regional, state, and national levels for student SAE projects that have shown growth and development of skills related to success in the SAE area. Applications for profi ciency awards take into account all the resources used, competencies gained, and progress toward individual goals. You may also get recognition for your SAE through your school science fair and the National Agriscience Fair Program run by the National FFA Organization. Keeping detailed records of the skills and competencies gained through your SAE is important for various reasons. One of the most important reasons is using them to get accepted into college or university programs, or for applying for a job. Many agricultural education students have used their SAEs as a springboard to a successful career. FFA Program of Activities FFA chapter members must participate in a chapter’s program of activities (POA) to achieve awards and recognitions. A chapter’s POA is an outline of the year’s agenda. The POA provides opportunities for chapter members to participate in the FFA personally, socially, civically, and competitively. Although FFA and some record keeping programs include forms for establishing your POA, you may begin simply by answering the following questions: • Where are we? • What do we have to work with? • Where do we want to be? • How do we get there? Using these questions to guide your POA is referred to as strategic planning. To answer these questions, you will fi rst need to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your chapter. Once these are identifi ed, chapter members may indicate ways in which the group may capitalize on these strengths. The strengths of a chapter include members’ skills as well as material resources. The next step in the strategic planning process is to determine the chapter’s goals. Part of this step may be creating a mission statement for your chapter. When creating a mission statement, consider the purpose, actions, and outcomes that your chapter expects to complete over the course of the CREATISTA/Shutterstock.com Figure 3-15. The same goal may be a short-term goal for one person and a long-term goal for another. For example, someone who has been showing livestock for many years may have a short-term goal of exhibiting a grand champion at the county fair. For someone who is new to showing livestock, the same goal would be a long-term goal.