Shalayne Smith Needham- Every year on the first full week of October for teachers across the country celebrate National 4-H week. This year, youth celebrated the event from October 4 through the 10th. Megan Hendrickson is a state program coordinator from Utah State University where she runs social media for Utah 4-H.
And tell us about National 4-H week and why it is celebrated.
Megan Hendrickson- So National 4-H week is really just a chance for the members of our program to celebrate being 4-Hers and sharing what they love so much about it, it gives them the opportunity to really share that 4-H pride.
SSN- Talk about some of the activities and celebrations that took place.
MH- We worked with our state 4-H ambassadors, that's our youth leadership team, and we came up with a little something each day that we could do to challenge our members to celebrate 4-H. So, for example, one day we had everybody wear green, or white our 4-H colors or just wear a 4-H flag of some kind.
Another day, we asked each 4-Her to send a little note or message to their 4-H volunteer to say thank you for their service. So we did things like that just to get the kids involved and excited about celebrating National 4-H week.
SSN- Why is it important to celebrate 4-H? And how was this year different from the past years?
MH- Yeah, so this year has actually been a really great year to celebrate National 4-H week because National 4-H Council brought a theme to this week, which was Opportunity For All and the campaign was created to rally support for 4-H programs and to start talking about solutions to the opportunity gap that affects 65 million kids across America.
So, our main purpose in forage is to give you life skills and prepare them to be contributing members of their community and to implement positive change. A theme like this is really great to get the necessary youth perspective and awareness about opportunities and also just letting people know that 4-H is really a place for everyone.
SSN- If people are interested in getting involved with 4-H, where can they find more information?
MH- The best place to go would be our website utah4h.org no hyphen there. They can also follow us on Instagram at Utah 4-H or find us on Facebook with our Facebook page Utah 4-H.
