When tasked with designing a pork-focused workshop for 8 to 18 year-olds attending the "Big Three Field Days" at Oklahoma State University, our Oklahoma Pork Council interns embodied the phrase "go big, or go home." Instead of simply creating one educational workshop, Chyann Emerson and Ethan Drake decided to plan four totally separate activities for students to complete while laughing and learning about Oklahoma's pork industry.

Using Oklahoma Pork's four strategic intentions as guideposts for each of the four stations, Chyann and Ethan kept around 150 young people locked-in for 90 minutes of pork-focused fun. This feat is extra impressive when you consider the students already had completed a jam-packed morning evaluating pigs during "Swine Day" of the three-day livestock judging event.

The sports-themed "Join Team Pork" workshop commenced with a great introduction of our starting line-up of staff members and talented college volunteers for the day. With help from Oklahoma Pork's Kylee Deniz, Ethan made a strong case for recruiting these young livestock enthusiasts to pork production in the future. The students then rotated through through four activities designed to get them moving while thinking about potential futures in pork.

Overall, Ethan and Chyann's workshop was a huge success. The event served as a celebration of Oklahoma's pork industry, and undoubtedly taught every participant much more than they knew about pork production and Oklahoma Pork's role to serve our farmers. Thank you to our incredible interns for planning such a special experience and to all the staff and volunteer support it took to succeed. We are all immensely proud to be on "Team Pork" and recruit the next generation to join us.