Short bio

Ludmila Kabelová: I come from a family with a farming tradition and I graduated from the University of Agriculture. In 1995, I started working as a president of the Association of Graduates and Friends of the Agricultural School in Chrudim r.a.

Michaela Vachunová: As a little girl from a city, I often spent my holidays with my grandmother who had her own farm and fields. This strengthened my relationship with nature and agriculture.

Our story

We met at a high school for agriculture in Chrudim as teachers of vocational subjects and a friendship was born from our mutual passion for agriculture, education and a transfer of experience.

We are both involved in adult education through the Association of Graduates and Friends of Agricultural School in Chrudim r.a., where we prepare lectures, seminars and support the activities of other organizations that focus on ecology and nature protection. Climate change and global warming affect agricultural work. Therefore, this issue has become key in the strategic planning of the association and is the main focus of its educational activities.

In 2017, for the first time, we received funding from the House of Foreign Cooperation within the Erasmus+ program to implement an international project. As a result, the number of trainers from the current membership base and their motivation to work in the association has increased.

The offer of our educational activities for our target groups has also expanded. It is also necessary to mention that this association which operates directly at the agricultural high school is probably the only one active in the country, and therefore the interest in our educational activities is high. The opportunity to get to know the approaches to management in other countries really enriches us and widens our expertise. Selected trainees were also perceived very positively on the farms they visited for their internships, as mutual discussions and exchanges of professional experiences were beneficial for both parties. We disseminated the obtained information to the general and ecologically focused public. The number of educated people in the target groups of the association (eg: teachers of vocational subjects, agronomists and farmers, members of gardening associations, employees of the state control body of agriculture and the state reference fund, our senior members of the association) exceeded our expectations.
Implemented projects also affected the personal development of our members.

The motivation of the trainers for language training has increased, especially in English. Since 2017, when we first visited agricultural organizations in Spain, the attractiveness of this language has increased among our members. By increasing our language skills we have become independent of the interpreting services that we had to pay for.

We thank the Czech National Agency for International Education and Research for the opportunity to work and actively participate in these international projects, and thus widen our professional knowledge, gain experience, make new friends and especially influence the "agricultural world".

Friendship is the only glue that will ever hold the world together.

Wilson Woodrow