e 4-H Connect

Exciting news!!!!  The NYS 4-H Foundation will continue the Give Change Make Change for Youth campaign again this year.  AND, they are offering to share cans for collecting change with you for FREE!!!!

We have cans and will bring them to the State Fair for distribution.  Come to the 4-H Office on the fairgrounds to get yours (we are not taking pre-orders).  This is a great opportunity to spread the word - 4-H does make change for youth…and people, if asked, people will give their change and more to support us.  Like last year, the intent of this campaign is educational…and to raise money for both the counties and the Foundation.  We ask that you return half of the money earned locally to the NYS 4-H Foundation - which in turn supports all of us.  Details are all on the web site.  This is a limited time offer…so please pick up your cans .

Support materials, posters, ads,  PSAs and article etc are still available on the  Give Change Make Change for Youth web page:  http://nys4h.cce.cornell.edu/givechange/index.htm

Spread the word - get your clubs involved - 4-H does make change!

4-H & FFA Tractor Operators’ Contest at Empire Farm Days

Congratulations to all participants in the Tractor Operators’ Contest on August 7, 2008! Close to 40 4-H members and FFA members participated. All participants received a certificate and a coupon for a free Seneca County 4-H Food Booth Ice Cream Cone sponsored by the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH).

Top 4-H members and scores were:  

• First Place -  Alex Duell, Cortland County, 366 – awarded $1000 scholarship from SUNY Cobleskill and trophy sponsored by NYCAMH
• Second Place – Kyle Meyer, Wyoming County, 476, awarded second place trophy from NYCAMH
• Third Place – Seth Ripley, Cortland County, 624
• Fourth Place – Zach Taylor, Madison County, 786
• Fifth Place– Zachary Wells, Genesee County, 998
• Sixth Place– Allen Presher, Steuben County, 1048
• Seventh Place– Derek Rechberger, Wyoming County, 1475
• Eight Place – Derrick Freeman, Allegany County, 1500

FFA participants were scored and ranked separately.

Many thanks to:

• Contest organizers, our gracious partners: Glenn Osterhout of Madison County FFA and Pat O’Hara of NYCAMH;
• Dave Leggett, CCE of Saratoga County and Kim Randall, CCE of Steuben County for help with planning and running the contest;
• Ellen Abend, Extension Associate, for the 2008 written exam;
• 4-H Educators who recruited participants and volunteers for the contest;
• Our wonderful 4-H and FFA volunteers who join us year after year to judge drivers, test drivers, and score the contest and contest photographer Charles Hardin (pictures will be posted soon on the NYS 4-H website);
• Lakeland Equipment sponsored BBQ lunch for all volunteers;
• Equipment dealers who furnish the multiple contest tractors;
• NYCAMH for sponsoring free ice cream and 4-H trophies; and
• SUNY Cobleskill for offering $1000 scholarships for top 4-H and top FFA contestants.

For more information, contact Kim Fleming, NYS 4-H Program Specialist at kff2@cornell.edu.

Register for your statewide 4-H professional development opportunity of the year by August 27th to get the Early Bird price of $190 for NYSACCE4-HE members and $220 for non-members. Better yet - get it done before State Fair and encourage your colleagues to do so also.                

You don’t have to be a chameleon to help transform 4-H Youth Development. Learn to branch out, promote health, go green, and choose Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) at Cornell Cooperative Extension’s statewide 4-H conference. Get to know Rochester through a fun interactive group rally.  Network with colleagues, attend diverse workshops, join the NYSACCE4-HE Annual Meeting, and recognize award-winning colleagues.

Check out the conference schedule, workshop descriptions, and more at:

 http://nys4h-staff.cce.cornell.edu/NYSACCEE4-HETrans4mationsConf2008.php

Registration: Register online http://forms.cce.cornell.edu/submitter.php?form_id=229 then print your registration form and mail it with your payment to Shawn Tiede, CCE-Wyoming County, 401 North Main St., Warsaw, NY 14569-1091.  Registration includes all events, meetings, and workshops as well as these meals: Thurs. breakfast, lunch, reception, and banquet; Friday breakfast; and all breaks.

Regular deadline is September 10 at $220 for members and $250 for non-members. Hyatt Hotel rates are Single $125, Double $125, Triple $175, and Quad $200.  Reserve your room by September 14 to obtain the conference rate.  Call (585) 546-1234 or 800-233-1234.  Use the NYSACCE4-HE Conference name to make reservations.  Learn more about the Hyatt hotel at http://www.rochester.hyatt.com.

State Fair is a great place to run into 4-H Alumni.  Past participants, warmly remembering their 4-H experiences, often wander through the Youth building.  And many times they want to talk about their 4-H experiences.  We are going to try to capture their stories this year - through a project we are calling the 4-H House of Stories.  The “house” (actually the 4-H gazebo) will be papered in photos and captions from alumni.  As we run into former 4-H’ers we will, if they are willing, take their picture…and ask them to caption the picture with what 4-H has done for them. 

The House of Stories will need a few good helpers to staff it.  Linda Henley, our new NYS 4-H Foundation Director, and a few Foundation board members have already volunteered.  We will be looking for staff to fill in when possible to help lure alumni over to talk and share.  Please consider sharing your time for this worthy cause.  You may even have a story to tell…..?  To volunteer, simply stop at the 4-H House of Stories to sign up.  A signup sheet will be posted inside.

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This year, New York State 4-H “Choose Health” initiative will be returning to the State Fair with a twist: “Choose Health for You and Your World.”  as the program will be extended to encompass another 4-H value: pledging heads, hearts, hands, and health for a sustainable world.

What is the connection between choosing a healthy lifestyle for oneself and preserving natural resources, saving energy, and improving the environment? The “Choose Health for You and Your World” initiative will attempt to show youth how sustainability efforts are good for personal and world health. For example, eating local fruits and vegetables helps to meet requirements towards a healthy diet, and also cuts down on travel costs. Refilling a water bottle makes it easy to stay hydrated, and cuts down on the amount of plastic thrown away.

We have begun to post resources for both of the Choose Health campaigns onto the Choose Health website: http://nys4h.cce.cornell.edu/program/events/choosehealth.php. There are video clips there, and access to the resources that we will be using at State Fair this year - so that you can print and use them as you see fit.  Additionally, you will find an editable press release there about 4-H and sustainability.

While at the fair you will notice new signage, mini-handouts (reducing the amount of paper waste), and evening activites on night 3 of each rotation that focus on sustainability and art.  Teens staying in the youth building will be able to participate in t-shirt redesigns, work with singer/songwriter Jeff Newhart on writing a song about sustainability, create art with a message…and more.

Press Corps teens will also be doing a feature “4-H’er on the street” interviews - sharing messages about sustainability and getting an indication about what folks know about the issue.  Additionally, participants will be encouraged to take part in the passport and walking challenges and Fitness Trail again. 

As this all rolls out - you may have suggestions or questions that help us to shape “Choose Health for you and your world”.  Please do not hesitate to share!
 

Materials to Promote the Choose Health For You and Your World Program

• Sustainability Press Release
• Healthy Facts Palmcard
• Healthy Facts Circles
• 4-H On the Street Video Challenge (with interview questions)

I’ve sent the following note and evaluation link to Career Ex participants (if we had e-addresses for them).  I know that it will not reach everyone.  Just sending it in hopes that you will help to extend it further.  There are two drop-down boxes that may be troublesome.  If you end up printing it off…just know that we are simply asking - what program did they attend and if they are a youth, chaperone or staff member.  They can manually fill in that blank if it is a problem.

Ideally we will tap the participants a couple of times during the year…to try to establish longer-term impacts.  Evaluations done at the event usually only get remarks about logistics (food was good/bad, too much walking, not the right temperature…you understand), or wow moments. 

I’m considering making e-addresses a mandatory field next year for registrations.  Quite a few comments came in that we did not provide enough pre-event information about things like the walking required.  We include that in our Handbook - on line a month in advance, and on the Career Ex blog…so perhaps we need to ensure that there are lots of ways to communicate.  I know that many of you (THANK YOU! ) have orientations pre-event, and that you talk with participants and parents in advance.  Other thoughts on how to improve pre-event communications would be appreciated. 

Thanks for all that you do!

Choose Health for Educators

This week has been very exciting as nearly 500 youth and their chaperones descended onto the Cornell campus for the 2008 4-H Career Exploration Program.  This program always signals the true start of the summer season in 4-H, soon to be followed by a multitude of county fairs, youth fairs, horse shows, judging tours, and culminating with State Fair at the end of August.  At the opening ceremony of Career Explorations the participants were encouraged to Choose Health. Each person received a passport to good health and was challenged to complete the checklist of things to do at Career Explorations that would be healthy choices.  As I thought about that, I decided that it would be a good thing to share some of those tips with all of you.  As you head into the summer season, on the run all the time, it is easy to overlook doing those things that you should do to stay healthy.  So here is a check list created just for all of you!

q Get enough rest.  Eight hours is recommended. Squeeze in a little cat nap if you need to in the middle of the day to balance out a long day at the fair.

q Avoid excessive caffeine, carbonated beverages, alcohol and tobacco, all of which boost the stress response.

q Expect surprises in your life and plan for them.  For example, anticipate likely problems that may happen at the county fair and develop a game plan for how to respond.  Remind yourself that there are always going to be things that creep up that you didn’t expect, and know that you have survived those things in the past.

q Eat Breakfast to give you a healthy start on the day.

q Drink water.  Lots of it!

q Wear comfortable shoes.

q Have a good laugh. Smile more, frown less.

q Opt for a diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grain breads and cereals.  Stay away from heavy fried foods and empty calorie foods that will weigh you down.

q Find time to do something you love that gets you removed from stressors.  Pull weeds in the garden, read a good book, or take a ride on the Ferris wheel.

q Relax your body, using methods like deep breathing, stretching, and meditation or self-talk.

q Use your vacation time!  We all need that time away with friends and family to relax and rejuvenate.

What’s a Wiki?

Recently we have been trying to be more in touch with teens involved in our statewide program through the use of wikis. For example we have had a wiki for the Focus Assistants at Career Explorations and one for the new Choose Health teen ambassador program. We are also looking at setting one up soon for all of you to use related to club management. If you are like me, you may wonder exactly what a wiki is and what it can do. A recent article in the Journal of Extension gave me some insights that I want to share with you. For the full article go to: http://www.joe.org/joe/2008june/tt1.shtml

“Wiki” is a Hawaiian word meaning “quick.” A wiki Web site hosts pages that can be quickly created and edited online using a Web browser. While searching for information on the Web, you may have come across articles in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a wiki Web site created to facilitate collaboration on building an online encyclopedia. When this article was written in March 2006, the Wikipedia Web site contained 1,712,885 articles submitted, edited, and updated by 3,989,147 registered users. Click here for current statistics.

Anyone with a Web browser and an Internet connection can view, create, and edit pages on the Wikipedia site. Furthermore, all the software required to build the Wikipedia Web site is open source and can be downloaded and used for free. The software that runs Wikipedia is called MediaWiki. MediaWiki is only one of many software packages for building wikis. However, it is one of the more popular ones.

Club Task Force Conference Calls

In March we convened a task force to begin to look at the 4-H Club delivery system in New York. Knowing that there are lots of different components related to club programming, the group chose to narrow it’s discussions for now to three main areas: volunteerism, marketing and image, and guidelines for quality club programs. Each topic will be addressed in three different conference calls over the next two months as follows:

Volunteers: June 27 at 8:30 am
Guidelines: July 10 at 10:00 am
Marketing: July 22 at 3pm

Task force members who are participating in the calls include:
Angela Northern, Bev Mancuso, Steve Billings, Jennifer Jensen, Megan Tifft, Mel Schroeder, Dawn Miller, Jody Maneely, Tom Davis, Lucinda Randolph-Benjamin, Alexa King, John Bowe, Chrys Nestle and Dinnie Sloman.

I am opening up the calls to anyone in the system who would like to participate. Great ideas are always welcome. If you would like to join one or more of the calls, please send me an email telling me which dates you will join us and I will add you to the mailing list.

Barb

National 4-H Council recently announced that the Community Improvement Through Youth (CITY) Project has won one of the 2008 4-H Families Count: Family Strengthening Awards, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  National 4-H Council will recognize the CITY Project and four other exemplary 4-H programs with awards of $15,000 each at Galaxy III in Indianapolis on September 17. 

In addition to the 4-H Families Count: Family Strengthening Award, the CITY Project was recently honored as a 2007 Successful Urban 4-H Program by the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents (NAE4-HA) Urban 4-H Programs Task Force and was selected as a National 4-H Headquarters Program of Distinction. The Program of Distinction designation is coordinated through the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES).

As part of the award process, the CITY Project will develop a replication plan to teach others about program with the intent that they will begin to use the CITY program model in their work. According to June P. Mead, CITY Project Director and Evaluator, “Winning this award will allow us to conduct a series of regional trainings and produce a toolkit on how to replicate our Youth Community Action (YCA) program.  The focus of the toolkit would be on the strategies and mechanisms youth-serving organizations can use to foster successful family and community strengthening program outcomes.”

The CITY Project http://nys4h.cce.cornell.edu/city/ is part of the Children, Youth and Families At-Risk (CYFAR) Program.  It uses one of Cornell Cooperative Extension’s (CCE) 4-H Signature Programs, Youth Community Action (YCA), as a model for promoting civic engagement, workforce preparation, and asset development among youth (13-18 years old). In Broome County, the CITY Project is partnered with CCE Broome County, the Broome County Urban League and Binghamton Housing Authority, Broome County Gang Prevention Program.  In New York City, the CITY project is partnered with Cornell University Cooperative Extension New York City and with Henry Street Settlement and the Police Athletic League Wynn Center. 

CITY Project Team:

Cornell University

June P. Mead, Project Director and Evaluator, Dept. of Human Development

Steve Goggin, Principal Investigator, Dept. of Human Development

Celeste Carmichael, Technology Coordinator, State 4-H Office

Cornell Cooperative Extension Broome County

Kay C. Telfer, Community Project Director

Vicki Giarratano, Community Project Coordinator

Kelly Mabee, Summer Employment Coordinator

Cornell University Cooperative Extension New York City

Jackie Davis-Manigaulte, Community Project Director

Jamila Simon, Community Project Coordinator

Cornell Caprine Outing will be held September 19-21, 2008  at 4-H Camp Owahta, in Solon, NY (Cortland County). Education and Fun for everybody.BBQ goats and chickens.Lectures, Demonstrations , Hands-on experience…and More.  We welcome and appreciate your suggestions before finalizing the program. Please mark your calendar and promote this special event. For details contact: Dr. Tro Bui  or Dr. Tatiana Stanton

$100 resource scholarships are available for the 4-H project year 2008-2009! 

Thanks to the New York State 4-H Foundation Willman Fund, every extension association engaging youth in animal science programming can qualify to receive a mini resource grant! (41) were allocated in 2007.  If you need help finding a resource, check out the NYS 4-H Resource Directory. Curriculum publications, kits, incubators, and other equipment/supplies for implementing educational activities in club, camp, school enrichment, special interest and after-school settings qualify. As you think about the new project year this Fall, begin thinking about your needs. Applications due Dec. 1, 2008.  For details see: http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/4H/4Hgrantapp.pdf