Southern Chapter

President’s Message

We have an amazing chapter with a wealth of talent and passion for our industry. I am excited to be a part of this Southern energy and honored to serve as your 2019-2020 President.

Education continues to be the dominant focus for our chapter. Over the past few years, the board has been grappling with how to meet our goal of providing floral education without competing against, and duplicating what our Education Partners, Associations and individual AIFD members already offer.  We are trying to work out how the chapter can support those educational endeavors while simultaneously finding and filling any gaps. The questions become, what types of educational programs and formats should we offer? Who is our target audience? How can we best serve?

This is an ongoing, long-term process, but for the interim, the board has focused on support for our SAIFD students, our PFDE candidates and our FFA students.  As we move forward, we will expand our offerings to these students while we continue to explore ways to fulfill unmet educational needs within the region.

Our secondary focus has been on public awareness. Since 2015, our chapter has been successful in establishing a presence at the NC Museum of Art’s Art in Bloom festival. Last year nearly 20,000 people attended the festival where AIFD designs were prominently displayed. Every year, our chapter has either provided stage presentations, workshops and even a floral fashion show.

We are exploring ways to do more public awareness activities in other locations within the region. Ruben Consa AIFD has approached the board with an idea to do some work in south Florida that has a lot of potential. If you have any ideas or know of other venues that may be open to hosting an event, please contact Ellen Seagraves AIFD.

We are also trying to find ways to better support our Southern members. What I miss most about Southern Conference was the time I got to spend getting to know so many of you – there are so many interesting people in this region!  One answer to that longing is FlowerWood 2020 – what I hope to be the first of many, at-cost, retreat-like getaways for members to gather informally. FlowerWood will occur in a beautiful mountain top setting with a lodge where members can enjoy nature, create floral art in the woods and hang out in front a huge fireplace. We owe this to ourselves!

I hope to meet you at FlowerWood or one of our other activities this year. Please follow us on social media platforms for up-to-date information on Southern events. We are on both Facebook and Instagram as AIFD Southern Chapter.

Till next time . . .

Terry Godfrey AIFD
Southern Chapter President 2019 – 2020