This year marks the 25th anniversary of Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (FS4JK). The organization has promoted farm safety to more than 6 million people through local programs and education since 1987. Over the past 25 years, FS4JK has established a network of more than 120 chapters across the U.S. and Canada that offer farm safety presentations on a local level. In that time, 35,600 volunteers donated 280,000 hours of their time to help promote safety on the farm.
Marilyn Adams founded the non-profit organization in 1987 after the death of her 11-year-old son in a gravity flow grain wagon accident. Its mission is to promote a safe farm environment to prevent health hazards, injuries and fatalities to children and youth.
“I didn’t really know what to expect when I started FS4JK,” said Adams. “The organization has grown and evolved so much in the past 25 years. It’s exciting to think about what lies ahead for the farm safety movement.”
FS4JK focuses on prevention through education. The organization has created a spectrum of nearly 100 educational resources on a variety of farm safety related topics. All resources are available to the public via an online catalog.
According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, from 1998 to 2009 the rate of all farm youth injuries has decreased by 59 percent. FS4JK was specifically mentioned as a contributing factor to the decline. Additional influences included other organizations, governmental agencies, educational institutions and private corporations.
FS4JK utilizes a system of local outreach chapters to spread farm safety education throughout the country. Corporate sponsors and individual donors fund FS4JK.
Current projects include overhauling the current ATV safety packet, plus working with the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health to research how safety needs are impacted in the changing demographics of agriculture as small, part-time farms are on the rise. PD
—From FS4JK news release
