AFE Accepting Educational Grant Applications Through June 1

Jennifer Zurko

You can apply now for American Floral Endowment (AFE) educational grants for 2015-2016. Educational grant applications are available online and must be submitted no later than June 1.

AFE educational grants help fund programs that are wide-reaching educational endeavors that solve industry needs and challenges and focus on attracting young people to the industry. For 2014-2015, AFE funded more than $42,000 in educational grants.

Examples of previous programs funded through AFE educational grants include:

• Floral Plant Give Away As a Recruiting Tool: An Evaluation of the Impact on Student Perception of Horticulture
• Floriculture InfoSearch Engine and AFE Floriculture Library, a powerful search engine for convenient and comprehensive access to floriculture literature, videos and presentations
• The National Floriculture Forum (NFF), which unites professors, extension specialists, graduate students, scientists and other industry leaders for a multi-day collaborative meeting 

• The e-GRO (Electronic Grower Resources Online) Alert, which brings together floriculture specialists to create an online distribution system for alerts about disease, insects, environmental concerns, physiological and nutritional disorders in commercial greenhouses 

• The Society of American Florists’ Pest and Production Management Conference, an annual event that educates growers, academia, extension specialists and suppliers about the latest in integrated pest management techniques

All requests are renewed on an annual basis with funding dependent on the amount of funds available at the time.

AFE is dedicated to advancing the industry through funding floriculture research, educational grants and scholarships. More than $15 million has been funded toward research projects benefiting the entire industry and more than $500,000 has been funded in scholarships designed to attract and retain the future leaders of the industry. To learn more about AFE, visit www.endowment.org or www.fb.com/americanfloralendowment. GT