Hanna Boys Center raising money to join FFA

Hanna Boys Center near Sonoma keeps expanding its youth agriculture program, and a July 9 barbecue and auction will help raise the funds needed for the next step forward.

The “On Our Way to The FFA” dinner, presented in partnership with Kunde Family Winery, will include a cocktail reception, tri-tip and chicken barbecue and live and silent auctions. A similar fundraiser in 2014 raised about $80,000.

The residential treatment center has operated a 4-H farm program since the days when it served youth as young as 8 years old. But today the vast majority of its young men are in high school, so the center is moving to make its farm program part of FFA, a national organization with wide-ranging agricultural offerings for high school students.

The center’s Archbishop Hanna High School hopes to be approved as an FFA chapter in 2017.

The proposed switch comes at a time of growth for the program, thanks to staff and the six volunteers who make up the center’s ag advisory committee.

“They are an amazing group of people that are extremely dedicated to our boys and this program,” said Leslie Antonelli Petersen, the center’s events and facilities manager.

With the volunteers’ help, the farm and vocational program has grown from six youth in 2012 to more than half the 108 youth at the center.

Along with showing sheep at the county fair, the center’s youth can raise pumpkins for sale this fall and take such farm mechanics courses as welding or woodworking. The training is helping prepare some young men for jobs after high school.

Marcia Kunde Mickelson, chief operating officer for Kunde Family Winery and a member of the ag advisory committee, said some of the center’s youth have gotten excited by the vocational training and said, “When I graduate, this is what I want to do.”

Among the highlights for this year’s fundraiser will be a raffle offering a wine cabinet made by the center’s youth, complete with 100 bottles of wine. Raffle sales will be limited to 100 tickets at $50 each.

The fundraising barbecue will begin at 6 p.m. at the center, 17000 Arnold Drive. Tickets are $50 each or $500 for a table of eight. To obtain tickets, call 933-2555 or go online to hannaboyscenter.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit