4-H: What's ahead?
BY AL ULMER

As we look at the history of the 4-H program over the last 100 years, I’ve been asked to look forward to the future of 4-H. I have no crystal ball that gives me a look ahead, but I see trends that will change the scope of how 4-H and other youth organizations will operate in the future.

4-H it’s not cook’n and cows anymore. To many, 4-H is thought of as a club for only country kids. In the beginning, more than 90% of the youth in LaMoure County 4-H program came from the farm. With changes in the size and age of LaMoure County farm families this past year less than 30% of 4-Her’s lived on the farm.

Every year at Achievement Days I hear about how the barn used to be so full of large animals they had to be tied outside, this year we enough room in the barn for three times the animals that made the trip to town. What caused this turn around? Is it that youth no longer like cow, hogs and sheep, No, two factors come in to play, the first is we have many less youth in the country than we did in the go old days, farm families are older and smaller, meaning less rural youth. Secondly, farming has changed, youth that live on today’s farm know nothing about large livestock because the farm they live on do not have livestock. How did 4-H change to meet these changes? One of the fastest growing areas in 4-H the last decade has been in small animals (rabbits, poultry, dog and cats). Youth learn the same responsibilities, of caring, feeding and records that we used to teach with larger animals. Now they just do it with animals that are smaller and easier to keep in the back yard.

With today’s fast pace life styles traditional 4-H project areas like cooking and sewing is being replaced with Computers, Aerospace, Careers Exploration and Employability and Character Counts. 4-H has always emphasized the teaching of life skills. Today’s youth need faster paced activities that teach them decisions making skills, problem solving, group dynamics how to plan and organize themselves and others, leadership, relating to change and applying the science and technology advances made each and every day.

Let’s face it youth have many more options than we did, so how will we adapt? In the near future the 4-H community club (the meeting at someone’s house) it will continue to be the main stay of 4-H programs. The demands on youth and volunteer leaders time will dictate a gradual shift to more after-school and short term programs. At the present time programs are being adapted to be offered as short term projects, where a project/program may be held one, two or three times. These projects/programs are very specific and may not be of interest to all youth.

I hope that some of the most important areas of 4-H stay with us. Projects like citizenship, public speaking and leadership development. If we are to keep this components it’s going to be the challenge of us in extension and volunteer leaders to turn these project areas into appealing The 4-H program has had a remarkable past 100 years, with more alumni than all other youth organizations combine. The program will continue to promote personal responsibility, good decision making and identifying realistic personal goals. 4-H is building the leaders of the 21st century who will be the community members and decision makers of the future.

The program will continue to strive to make "every kid a winner" and to "make the best better".