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Farm Safety 4 Just Kids Expands Vision for Safety

The fact that agriculture has the second highest fatality rate among youth workers¹ keeps Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (FS4JK) founder and President Marilyn Adams up at night. Following the tragic death of her 11-year-old son Keith in a gravity flow wagon, she made it her personal mission to keep kids safe.

“Our dream at FS4JK is to make sure every child in the U.S. has an opportunity to learn how to be safe on farms and in rural settings,” Adams said. “We can only achieve that goal through our recently created Children’s Safety Campaign endowment.”

While both individual and corporate sponsorships drive the work of FS4JK today, the future of the organization and its safety legacy rests on the endowment. After nearly 25 years of providing educational resources, organizing volunteers and advocating for children’s safety on farms, Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (FS4JK) desires to continue its work while also greatly expanding its efforts in the next 25 years and beyond. Although overall preventable farm-related injuries have declined by 60 percent nationally, more work needs to be done to continually reduce farm-related injuries and deaths.

FS4JK currently employs nine outreach coordinators and has 120 chapters across 33 states and four Canadian provinces. Broadening the organization’s presence into every state will require a large capital base to ensure the sustainability of the program. Paramount to its success will be hiring outreach coordinators who can dedicate time to safety in each state, while expanding awareness of FS4JK and organizing volunteers to conduct safety training events.

The Children’s Safety Campaign endowment will need the support of both corporate and individual donors to meet its goal of “reaching every kid on every farm.” Every dollar given to the Children’s Safety Campaign will go toward saving the lives of rural children.
To find out more about the endowment and how you can help keep children safe in your community visit our Children’s Safety Campaign website.

^{Nationwide® and Nationwide® Agribusiness have roots in agriculture: Nationwide began as part of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and Nationwide Agribusiness through its Iowa-based farm and cooperative heritage. The Nationwide Foundation has been a major contributor for more than 20 years to Farm Safety 4 Just Kids' focus on local chapter development, aimed at spreading the safety message to farm, ranch, and rural families, particularly children. Gary Douglas, president and COO of Nationwide Agribusiness, is the national chairman of FS4JK's Children's Safety Campaign.}

^{1 Agriculture has the second highest fatality rate among youth workers at 21.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalents compared to 3.6 per 100,000 across all industries. Occupational Injuries and Deaths Among Younger Workers-United States, 1998-2007. Journal of the American Medical Association, 304 (1). 33-35 (2010).}