Engaging Youth, Serving Communities Jeff Buckley, Extension 4-H Specialist, Georgia Jenny Jordan, Extension 4-H Specialist, Georgia [email protected] [email protected] Program History Engaging Youth, Serving Community began with a grassroots effort to recognize the 4-H Centennial in 2002. As a result, the National Conversation on Positive Youth Development in the 21 st Century brought together youth and adults in local communities, at the state level, and finally in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to develop a positive future for youth in America’s communities. Forty-two Georgia youth and adult joined in the conversation. From Conversations, national goals were established to empower rural communities to involve youth as partners in decision making and governance. In Georgia, the Youth Summit was working towards similar goals. In 2011, Georgia joined 15 land grants in working together to impart youth with the life skills and experience they need to emerge as effective leaders and contributing members of society. Another objective is to improve the ability of youth and adults to collaborate with community members to identify local issues and develop strategies for addressing them. The end result is that Youth and adults have a more positive attitude toward the role of youth in communities. Accomplishments, Impact & Results • Georgia team provides 8 hours of training for county groups and awards $2500 in grant funding for projects; program is extended for a second year through National 4-H Council grant. • Lumpkin County is added to the county teams and creates a collaboration with high school teacher • Kings Bay collaborates with the navy base to raise awareness, connections and collaboration between on base and off base residents. • Chattooga County beautifies downtown and sees and increase in tourism • Morgan County completes the DFACS room renovation and moves to health education projects to raise awareness of safe behaviors • Taylor County is creating awareness for healthy choices through use of technology. Teen created messages for teens are part of the solutions. • Teams have retained at least 50% of their original team members and all have recruited additional planning team members. • Teams have completed community forums and shared the success and challenges of the forum with a statewide listening session of EYSC counties • Instructional techniques and activities for youth adult partnerships, team building and forum success have been expanded from original curriculum Program Attributes & Goals • Teams of youth and adults in rural communities collaborate to make a difference • County teams host a community forum to identify needs or solutions. • Teams expand to include other stakeholders and leverage support for project. • State youth adult teams support counties • Evaluation of learning, project and process as important as results • Curriculum provided for planning teams and support systems in place online and in training throughout the process