One of our young and inspiring YDP participants Andrew Hammill is looking to go a step further in the ABP Competition after reaching the final last year. Andrew is no stranger to finals as he was our Junior Section champion in the 2017 YDP final and he is a great young ambassador for our breed.
The ABP Angus Youth Challenge encourages young people who have an interest in agri-food production to compete in an innovative skills-based competition with a chance to win five Aberdeen-Angus calves at this years Balmoral Show! Year 11 boys Andrew Hamill along with Clarke Simpson and Jack Owens from The Royal Belfast Academical Institutional, will be looking to go a step further in the competition after they reached the last stage of the competition last year. A key theme throughout their entry video is to promote animal welfare and to spread the word about compassionate farming. You can check their brilliant entry video by clicking here.
Speaking of the competition, Andrew Hamill said:
“The competition has been a great experience for myself and the rest of the team, and has taught us skills which we can take forward with us in our futures. The skills I have learned through the Aberdeen-Angus Youth Development Programme have really helped with parts of the competition, in particular the interview stage. The competition has been a great experience, we’ve created some great friendships and most of all we’ve all had great fun doing it. We look forward to hearing the results and hopefully we can bring the 5 Aberdeen-Angus calves back to our school.”
John Wilson, Physics Teacher from The Royal Belfast Academical Institutional, has played a key role in helping the boys develop the video and enter the competition. John comments:
“In general, the competition is fantastic for the school children. I saw my team last year grow in confidence and it really helped them mature. The 3-minute video entry helps develop technical skills with videoing, editing and voice overs. The next stage involves an interview (the stage we completed last week and for which we are waiting on the results!!), this really helps the pupils with public speaking. Most, if not all of them had never been in an interview before and so doing one will really help them in later life with job applications. The last stage is one where the group pitch their ideas to judges from various categories, Ulster Farmers Union, food and drink manufactures, young farmers club, marketing, finance, to name but a few. This develops again public speaking, thinking on their feet, as well as teamwork, working together to impress the judges with ideas about the calves and their knowledge of meat production.
“And I suppose that’s the major advantage of this competition, my groups, who mostly don’t come from a farming background, have learned so much about farm to fork and the entire meat processing process. They are more informed in general about the benefits of the Aberdeen-Angus breed and how to promote that breed to the wider public. So, we will see how we get on this year, hopefully we can go all the way, we are hoping that our unique pitch of coming from the very heart of Belfast city centre will prove attractive to the judges!”
We would like to thank John and Andrew for taking the time to speak to us and we wish Andrew and the team all the very best in the competition. It’s great to see so many youngsters all over the country getting involved and becoming great ambassadors for our breed, we are delighted that Andrew has managed to develop skills through the YDP and has taken them forward in to the competition.
