May 8, 2012

Today in class we went to the extension office over in Health Service building. We had a speaker there that talked about the 4-H youth development and what all it entails. I had never heard of this before but apparently it was originally developed in the 1960s and in the 1960s-1980s it was just for farm children. It was a way for them to help build skills in order to help out their farms. Then in the 1980s it switched to being for everyone not just children who lived on farms. I think this program is neat because it allows children to get to see and learn all different things. The children can have a project and work on it anywhere from 2-12 months. These projects can be on agriculture, sewing, photography, cooking, etc. I think this is a great way for students early on to see what they are interested in or good in in order to find a career/hobby for later in life. I think this would have been very helpful for me and a lot of other students because I was still unsure when I came to college what I wanted to major in. This extension office that we went to is funded by The Ohio State University, the federal government and by the county itself. The extension off who does things like the 4-H, does not always get a whole lot of funding which then means a lot of these projects can not always happen. It is like most things right now, they keep cutting back budgets which then means that other things get cut as well. They also told us that we could look into getting a job working with the nutrition sections that the extension office covers as well. They cover health and consumer sciences, nutrition, the 4-H and finance stuff. We did a little activity in class that showed how they work with some of their participants that are having financial issues. They show exactly how much all those little things you buy adds up in one year, and so you get to see that it may only be a few dollars here and there but then over time all that money turns into hundreds if not thousands of dollars.