Winners - Ideas Happen 2003
Inspiring new beginnings
Visa is proud to support the creative spirit and boundless energy of our Ideas Happen winners. We believe that building a better community starts by helping people build their dreams. Our twelve outstanding innovators each received $25,000 from Visa to help them launch their ideas. We can hardly wait to see what they’ll do next.
Self Expression
Hanna M., NYFarmland/Self-Expression
Farming has always been an integral yet sadly neglected aspect of this country’s greatness and survival. It used to be that becoming a farmer meant making a meager but viable living. Now, most farms are in debt in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Families who have lived for generations on the same lands are forced to sell to the banks and commercial industries just to survive. Most commercialized farms are responsible for the mistreatment of livestock, the strip mining of land which has devastating environmental effects, and the spread of diseases such as ecoli. I want to do something to keep farming a localized, family business where men and women can actually make a living and support their families.
I believe that with the right amount of publicity and public outcry, we can all contribute to saving America’s farms.
I have written a film about a farming family which encompasses many of the struggles of today’s farms such as livestock disease, outdated equipment, lack of succession by sons and daughters who don’t see a future for themselves garnered by the land, as well as many other issues. With the grand prize, I would see this film made and distributed, using any proceeds as donations towards organizations like Farm Aide, with hopefully enough to start a farming charity in my home state of Vermont. We should all get together to help this country’s true patriots.
