Family Fun Night

Flyers were distributed to schools, registration forms collected from community agencies, supplies purchased and the set-up was organized. The event was held on March 20 from 5-7  p.m. at the Ironwood Memorial Building. This event was a great promotional activity to really keep MSU Extension visible in the community. This year,19 organizations came and provided an activity. Kiwanis provided $200 to pay for snacks for the event and Children’s Trust Fund provided $75 which was used to purchase door prizes. Healthy snacks and bottled water were provided to each child.  

113 adults and 173 youth attend the event. We also had more than 40 volunteers from all the organizations to help run the ac-tivities. This event has been successful for ten years. Gogebic County Family Fun Night has brought families and organizations together for the benefit of all children in the community. Because of the success of this event, a few local agencies began offering Mini Family Fun Nights to smaller audiences in both Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties to continue promoting positive family interaction throughout the year.

4-H Spin Club: Introduction to Babysitting

A 4-H SPIN club is a combination of the concept of special interest groups with the 4--H club model. Thus the S and P are taken from special and the I and N  from interest combined with clubs gets 4-H SPIN Clubs.  Erin Ross provided Intro to Babysitting three times in 2018. Sessions were held in Feb/March, and 2 sessions in June. We were able to secure outside funding from Children’s Trust Fund, Aspirus, and the Gogebic Co. 4-H Council in order to keep costs low for participants and provide a very nice babysitter’s bag for youth to take with them when they go to a babysitting job. The Dollar Tree donated coloring books, crayons and games to add to the babysitter’s bags. Children’s Trust Fund has added $500 to their annual budget to continue to support this effort in the future.

A total of 33 youth in 3 locations have completed Intro to Babysitting in 2018.

Digital Ambassadors Grant

This grant was submitted in November and in December, we received our letter of intent confirming that we had received the grant for Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee counties. Once we received the notification there was a very short turn around time to secure staff and/or volunteers to attend the National training in Chevy Chase, MD. These names and contact information had to be submitted to National 4-H by December 21.

Anne Kretschmann and Erin Ross spent many hours working with staff in the counties to identify volunteers to attend. Once attendees were identified we had to work on securing travel and identifying where that funding was going to come from before being reimbursed by National 4-H Council. This was a lot of time and effort on our parts to secure these details. Total amount received from this grant is $58, 600. This will increase Anne’s time from .5 FTE to .75 FTE for the duration of the grant which runs from 01/01/19—07/31/20.

MSU Extension helps seniors to stay healthy

“Walk with Ease” is a class sponsored by Michigan State University Extension and led by Anita Carter. The class uses a text book provided by the Arthritis Foundation and it teaches good  habits of walking and exercise to help seniors and those suffering from arthritis to remain mobile. This five-level walking process is designed to help participants improve their body mechanics when walking, from placement of the shoulders and feet to breathing. Carter also leads Tai Chi clas-ses as well as A Matter of Balance classes several times per week. Carter states that, for seniors, the lack of mobility is the number one crisis they face.