Manitoba farm women have received a bundle of money to drop into their circle.
The federal government has awarded two farm women’s groups in the province $500,000 to be spent over the next three or four years on training for rural women and young farmers.
The money was left over from the adjustment fund set up after the Crow Benefit was eliminated. In meetings last year in Manitoba with federal officials, Kathy Batho proposed a farm training program.
“We stayed in the pile of proposals,” Batho said.
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Last month the joint proposal from the Manitoba Farm Women’s Conference group and the Manitoba Women’s Institute was accepted.
The grant will be administered by MWI, which will get money to hire a half-time person.
Batho said the project will look at developing leadership and business skills in young and beginning farmers, especially women. The grants could cover mentorship situations, apprenticeships, rural child care and ways to get farm women on public boards.
Barbara Stienwandt, president of MWI, and Batho will serve on a seven-member committee to develop proposal criteria. They are meeting this week to discuss who else should be on the committee and how to get going. By this fall the committee should be ready to accept proposals.
Neither Batho nor Stienwandt saw any problem with overlapping training with the Canadian Farm Business Management Council. The MWI president sits on the council’s advisory board and will be aware of what it offers and how to make the new committee’s proposals different.
