MSU Extension 4-H Volunteering & Mentoring

I would like to welcome everyone today to help you kick off your 4-H year with confidence and clarity. We're going to share some tips on how to create a roadmap to keep your club organized, energized, and focused all year long. We're excited for you to be part of us. I am Christine Heverly. I'm an extension educator on our volunteer excellence support team and our co-lead for extension volunteer management. I am based in Clinton County. I'll let my two co-presenters give a quick introduction also. Yeah, I'm Michelle Neff. I'm the Supervising Educator up in District 6, so Central Michigan, and do also healthy living, or not healthy living, exploration days and other club development programming. Hi everyone, I am Laurie Revetto. I'm an Extension Educator based in Wayne County, so just outside Detroit, and I'm with a team that does career exploration workforce readiness. I also run a virtual 4-H club, so I'm excited to share some of these tips and ideas that we have and hear yours as well through the chat. So we're excited for you all to be with you today. We are recording this, so we ask that you keep your questions within the chat. We will stop the recording at the end and open it up for any questions that you want to ask verbally and have some ideas sharing time also. So MSU Extension fully believes in creating welcoming environments in our programs where everyone feels like they belong, feel safe, and have a voice. We know that human differences enrich our lives, work, and community. We embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are committed to providing programs to all segments of our community. It's also important to understand the long -standing history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us all to reside in the land and seek to understand our place within that history. And the land acknowledgement on the screen is one step in that process. So as we get started this afternoon, I do want to ask everyone to take a moment to reflect and think. So as we think about planning in our clubs, our icebreaker activity today is what's one thing you're looking forward to in your club this year? All right. So we have getting to, getting outdoors with kids, getting kids becoming more hands -on and determined in the, determining the meeting content, building on the skills the youngest showmen are learning, continuing to watch our new members who joined last year open up more and get more involved, taking the club to an MSU training, increasing engagement and meetings, adding new project leaders to make and building relationships. I'm new in my area, having a long-term project, kids having fun. Those are all great things that we can be looking forward to in our clubs, and that's what we want to do. When we take the time to plan, it makes it a little bit easier sometimes to meet our end goals of what we are looking forward to within our clubs. So in 4-H, we talk a lot about helping young people thrive. And when we talk about that, we're talking about the fact that young people, and this came up in some of your comments, are not just succeeding today, but that they're growing into these confident and capable adults in four key areas is what we're looking at. So fostering sparks, promoting belonging, supporting developmental relationships and then encouraging engagement and that's what truly element um elevates our program into a true 4 -h experience a true um opportunity for young people to thrive so when we're talking about the spark piece where it's that thing that's going to help young people light up we're giving them that reason to grow when we create a sense of belonging they're feeling safe and valued, like they have a place in 4 -H. When we support developmental relationships, we provide trusted guidance that can help them take healthy risks and build those life skills needed to thrive. And then when they're engaged, they have a voice, they have choice, they have ownership in their experience. And so they're not just showing up to a 4-H program, they're actually developing skills for a lifetime. And we mention all of this because when we do this planning and we plan for the club year, these are the components that are a part of it, making sure that there's opportunities for developing sparks, belonging, relationships, and engagement. And this also helps our young people become beyond ready. So these elements are not just important for their current 4-H experience, but that they're being beyond ready for their future. And when we talk about, if you want to do the next slide, Christine, when we talk about being beyond ready, we're saying it can be college, it could be a career path, it could be leadership in the community, it can be whatever it is that they are contributing into our world and that they have the elements that will help them be resilient, motivated, equipped to take on whatever life brings them next. So when we consider that 4-H thriving model in our experiences in our planning for the year, we are really helping young people then be beyond ready for whatever's next. And we mentioned this about sparks, but I just want to reiterate it again, because it is a component that is really important when you're thinking about planning the full 4-H year, is helping young people have that spark, that interest, that passion, that skill that helps give them energy, gives them purpose. Helping young people identify and explore what their spark is, is really a powerful way to help them become beyond ready for their future. So when we take time to get to know our young people, watch different sparks, help them explore it, it really helps with our yearly planning so we can determine what types of educational or community service activities, we might want to have the club consider so that it can be connected to the sparks of the different members in the group. And you'll see that come up in a few different ways throughout this presentation. So what I'd like you to do is in the chat, I want you to think about what are some program and activities you were involved with as a youth that was impactful for you so I want you to reflect and it's a waterfall chat so don't hit enter yet so when I say go I want you to put in the chat what are some program or activities that you were involved with as a youth that was really impactful to you and so when I say I'm going to give you a couple minutes to type in the chat when I say go we will read them all at the same time So again, 4-H, Girl Scouts, Youth Club, Sewing, Marching Band, Color Guard, Music, Running and Meet, Running, Sewing, Project Red, Teen Leadership, Trips to Washington, D.C., Toronto, Teen Activities. Awesome. These are all great examples of programs that you obviously remember and they're impactful to you and so you feel like are really important. Well, we want our 4-H clubs to be positive, impactful events as well. And so we feel like these are some important things that our outcomes are of our successful 4-H club. So go ahead, Christine, and put those on there. We want our kids to have experience with active leadership development. We want them to learn about club leadership. We want them to, we want them to learn about officer procedure and how to run a meeting, just those general basic leadership skills. We want that to have and be a part of a 4-H club. We want them to gain knowledge, gain knowledge in themselves, but also gain knowledge in their project and gain knowledge in just the world around them, what's going on and that type of thing. So we want them to have that understanding of education happening, gaining some knowledge. We want it to be fun. You've talked about that. We've talked about that, how that spark and that fun is what's going to keep bringing kids back. So we want 4-H clubs to be fun. We want there to be this form, this sense of bonding, that belonging, that developing of friendships. I know of many developed in 4-H, and I see my kids seeing friends that they developed in 4-H, even just last night at a basketball game at a neighboring town, that type of bonding. So that's part of the developing of successful clubs is that friendship. We want also our clubs to serve the community and make it make a difference. That's part of our 4-H pledge is to make the best better and to serve our community. And so we really want to make sure that, you know, we're including some service learning or some community service to our clubs. Clubs should also include goal setting, working together to achieve goals, also personal goals. So record books, recording things, writing things down of this is where I'd like to be. This is where I want to go. How do I get there? And you as volunteers would help youth get there. And then some other things, we really want to make sure our clubs have that youth voice. Their youth, their voice needs to be heard, needs to be taken, needs to help direct where the club's going, what projects, what areas they would like to explore and do. And then we want our clubs to be respectful and feel valued. And we want our kids to be, have that respect and feel valued as well. So ultimately, these are some of the feelings or thoughts that we feel are successful outcomes of a club. So when we think about club meetings, and when we think about planning, we wanted to just kind of give you an overview of what are some of the 4-H club meetings like guidelines or ideas. As we plan our meeting, here is a model. Many of you have maybe seen this model before or have used this model in many of what you do, but we just wanted to go through each of the three parts of a 4 -H club meeting so that we know, so we understand what that means. The three components include business time, educational learning time, and recreational time. During that business time, we want to see leadership development. During that educational time, we want to see that knowledge and skill development. And then that recreational, fun, social time is really about those friendships, fun part of our 4-H meeting. So we're going to go into each one a little bit just to explore what that means. So the business time of a 4-H club is where discussion and planning takes place. Normally, we would say this would be 15, 10, 15 minutes, depending on the size of your club, what business you might have to do. A lot of times that business meeting is also where officers will be elected, making motions. So if your club has money and they need to decide on paying bills, that's going to happen during that business part of the meeting. It also could be a committee report. So if a committee is out or you're wanting to report on something that you heard that's going on in another part of the county regarding 4-H or you have a small committee to look into an activity, they would be able to report out to everybody about what's happening. So that's the business time. The educational learning time is really where this is like the, should be the bulk of a 4-H meeting. We want this to be, as you can see, 50 % of the time of a meeting. And so that could be 40 minutes, could be 60 minutes, but ultimately we want it to really be that focus of a meeting is that educational learning. So what are some things, oh, go back. What are some things you might do for fun educational time in your meeting? So in the chat, if you wanted to mention, what are some things that you do that are fun and educational in some of your meetings? We have some examples up here on the screen, like field trips, guest speakers, demonstrations, hands-on learning. Really, this is that time where kids are developing their spark and their passion. And they're helping gain those skills related to that. Someone uses, Lori put in, she uses a lot of guest speakers. Quiz Bowl. Oh, I love Quiz Bowl. I was just going to say, I know there's some clubs in our county that do like a Quiz Bowl Jeopardy thing. That's very fun. Show and tell. Okay. So they're going to bring something. They're going to talk about it. Ask questions. Learn. Field trips to work on activities. Yep. Guest judges. Oh, that's a good idea. like bring a speaker in or somebody in that can pretend to be the judge or be a judge and help kids understand what they might see or do in a ring or if they're going to show. So anyway, that's the, again, a big portion of a 4-H club meeting time should be that learning part. And then the 15, 10 minutes or a shorter time, whether this is at the beginning or at the end of a meeting, normally this would probably happen at an end of a meeting. But again, Every club's going to be a little bit different. We want there to be like a game or icebreaker or some food or some snacks. So, again, it's that opportunity for kids to run around, maybe play tag, you know, that type of thing, an opportunity for them to bond and get to know each other. um it can be very organized and we have a guide that we just put in the um the link or in the chat that kind of gives you some icebreaker ideas or some game activities that you can do with your kids um but it's this also could be um organic meaning the kids seem excited you know and and depending on your facility this may look a little bit different as well if you're close to somewhere they can be safe outside and that type of thing. So as we really think about planning for our club year, creating a roadmap, this is an opportunity to start creating a roadmap for your year. Before you plan your meetings or events, you want to always ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish this year? And as you come up with different, some ideas, there's different stops along the roadmap to make sure that you can meet those different ideas. So take a moment to look at, we're going to spend the next part of the webinar looking at planning and goals. How do we plan and set goals for our clubs? Some different communication systems to how we keep that communication going within our club. How we build in that volunteer and family engagement. How we have youth voice within our clubs and how we also build in celebrations and reflections. So as having planning tools on hand makes the process smoother and helps make everyone on the same page. So when we think about this, we first have to look at community needs. We need to talk around your community what are the needs that aren't met what types of community service projects can we do what are the gaps in the community where is their needs what are the the community in your club what are the youth in your club need for experience then think about setting goals use that first mean to find out what the youth want to do learn and plan out make sure you include potentially a service project set goals for the whole group maybe have them set some individual goals that they want to do? How do you build on those youth-led projects and getting more youth? It helps paint that club level. Set a few club level goals. What this might include is what kind of community service project you want to complete? Do we want to increase the public speaking ability of everyone in the club? Do we have more opportunities, more engaged families, more deeply? Think about what are the goals of the whole club you can set? And then making sure that youth are involved in this process. Their ideas and interests should shape your club year. Then you want to take the time to plan ahead. Build out a year. Create a calendar of all the dates. Know in advance so as many as possible. Utilize others to teach and bring in. You don't have to be the only one teaching. I heard a lot of people talking about guest speakers or show and tells or those pieces. Utilize other people to teach. Bring in snacks. Do those pieces. Kind of plan that out so it can help you out. We have a variety of resources that we're going to drop into the chat that can help you think about some of these pieces and plan some of those things when you think about your year take the time to reflect and plan things out if it's your first year sometimes it's harder because you are just getting into it but as you've been doing it maybe for more than one year think about what went well in the previous year and look okay that those things work well the youth seem to do it and then take their interest? Are they still interested in kind of doing that kind of activity? When you get their voice and you kind of take that time to do some planning, it really helps you out. We have two very specific new resources for you that will kind of help you think about this. So we have the 4-H club calendar. This lets you think about what you want to do for an entire year. You can write your goals for the club year on it. You can think about a theme for each meeting, where you're going to meet, what your business items are, what you're learning, and what your recreational social is. You can use it at the end to write how many people attend that meeting to kind of keep a record of where your ebbs and flows of attendance are. So that handout is in the chat, and it has a section for each month of the 4-H program year. Then we also have a 4-H club meeting outline. This allows you to really think a little bit more deeply about each meeting. So you want to, You can set some objectives for the meeting. What do you want youth to walk out of the meeting with? And then you can think about the things that you're going to do. What are you are you going to have some activities for early arrivals? Because sometimes you have families that show up early and what are you going to have them do? Are you going to have some coloring sheets on the table? Are you going to have just a get to know you game or are you going to have that more social time? Then you're going to think about what is the business perfect? What are some business things? What do you need to accomplish? Do you have to pay some people back? Do you need to plan something? Do you need to make some decisions about your club? Then you can think about what is our educational learning going to be at this club? What are we going to focus that time and educational learning on? And then what am I going to do that's fun, recreational, and social? Some of these are going to cross over. Your educational learning might be part of your fun, recreation, social at times or your early activities. The other thing this allows you to do is you can't do it all on your own. is start to think about what other volunteers are within your club that can take on some of these things. One of the things you could consider activities for early arrival is think about what if you create a welcoming committee in your club and have different families take that on at different months so they're the ones welcoming people in so you can focus on getting set for everything. So think about how do I find other people within your club to do that. Additionally as we think about additional resources and ideas for support um we want you to really think about there are think at the local level what are those things at your local level utilize your 4-H program coordinator there are a wealth of resource and information and they can share a lot of things for you to help you be successful they can be a brainstormer or different pieces like that there's also and on many offices there's materials you could check out to utilize sometimes there's things you can use for education. They might have quiz bowl buzzers. They might have just a variety of resources that you can use within your club. And then also, it's really important to pay attention to your county newsletter because there might be great information in that. Then at the statewide level, we have the MSU Extension website. Poke around on it. Find some different things on there. You might find some things that are really helpful to you that you can share within your club and help you support and plan for things. You can subscribe to the different newsletters we have we have a news digest and you can subscribe to that to get different information and then you can also if you enjoy using social media you can follow some of the different social media pages we have to really share some ideas and information and get some other ideas additionally at the national level we have there's some supports and resources for you utilize 4-H mall to buy different if you have funds in your club there's curriculum and resources you can purchase from that that might be helpful in your club. And then they also have their social media accounts and have different resources on their websites that can be helpful within your clubs. So I want you to take a moment to think for, do you have a favorite tool or resource you already use? So I'm going to take a 30 second pause for people to think. And if you have one, drop that in the chat. So we have people who use social media a lot in their club. Yeah, that's a great way to support and do some planning. You can get ideas from that too. Yes. So communication systems, there are a variety of ways that you might end up communicating with the families and youth in your club or group. What's important is to think about the fact that you might need to use multiple options because of preferences and needs of the families involved in your program. So you really want to consider accessibility and the preferences. You could use a survey or a short question or even just a quick discussion with new families to find out what their preferred communication methods are prior to using something. I know a lot of groups use multiple platforms, so you might end up using email or text alerts, text chains. There's a lot of apps like GroupMe or Band that often help people communicate or share updates. You could have shared calendars that have dates on it. That's where that calendar that's shared ahead might be really helpful. Some of these platforms or these options you can actually set up for automatic reminders or you could utilize others. This is another example of where you could utilize other volunteers or have parents become volunteers and maybe they're the reminder team or maybe there's a young person who ends up being the reminder team who sends reminders before meetings or events. It's also really important that when you're thinking about communication, that you're acknowledging and responding to questions or concerns as they come in, remembering how it felt to be new. So when especially when new families and new youth are joining the program, it can be really unclear of what the expectations are or when meetings are, and this is where some of this pre-planning and then acknowledging that we need to share this information can be super helpful. It's also really important when you are finding out information about our young people that you're respecting confidentiality when you're discussing things with them and family matters. So you're not sharing things about why someone couldn't come to something or why there might be different communication methods for different parents or guardians to respect that confidentiality and privacy of that family. And then as Christine was mentioning with newsletters and communication, it's really important to share some of those statewide opportunities and local opportunities regularly. Your club may just be one step in a 4-H journey and may be part of a very extensive 4 -H journey and experience. I like to talk about how 4-H is so many things and the more you put into it or the more opportunities you take on, the more you'll get out of it. So helping share those opportunities can be really important for families, especially those that aren't familiar with some of the experiences and opportunities. So spotlight, great things that you see are going on in the social media. Those are great to add into the business component of your meeting. You know, things that you hear from your 4 -H program coordinator, things that are coming from the 4-H newsletter, those are great things to share at meetings. You can ask your, again, your 4-H program coordinator for ideas or support on how maybe you need to do this or how to get the best information. Maybe there's a great local calendar of things that are going on that you could share. This is another great role that I would say could be for a youth officer or another volunteer. Maybe they are the opportunity sharer at each of the meetings. They are charged with, you know, looking at social media and looking at the newsletter and sharing opportunities, three to four of them at every meeting, and then helping connect people who are interested. So there's a lot of things that you can consider with communication that could work best for your club or group. So we'd love to do some idea sharing again. So in the chat, please share what are some strategies that you use to communicate in your club that have been successful? Oh, a Facebook page. That's a cool. Yeah. So some people have like private Facebook pages or social media accounts where it's just the registered families that's a great way email text groups band app yep starting a newsletter and a Google calendar they can join yeah the shared calendars can work well text group one for kids and one for parents ooh like it Facebook page and messenger okay we see that's pretty common so then we've referenced a few I know this came up a lot. People are very interested in volunteer and family engagement. So we've referenced a few ideas throughout, and there's a variety of ways that you could utilize families and other volunteers. So it's really important to generate that support system so that you're not doing it alone. Christine mentioned this earlier. You want to look to ways that you can increase volunteers in your club and meet volunteers where they're at. So everybody has different skill sets and things that they're going to be able to offer. So it's really important to recruit and encourage parents to become screen volunteers. The local staff can help you with role descriptions of what some of the needs might be, encouraging parents and guardians to become volunteers so that they can assist and support in the ways that they can, which could be some of the ways that we've mentioned earlier. Perhaps it is providing snacks. Perhaps it is sharing opportunities. Perhaps it is organizing, you know, the communication. Maybe they're financially minded and they would manage the checkbook and the club account. So seeing what their solid roles are and what they would be interested in and helping them get into those places where there's needs. Again, 4-H staff can really help you with that role descriptions, the training, the helping somebody through that process of becoming a screen volunteer. They can also help you with any challenges or ideas for your next year. So a super helpful resource. And then utilize programs like we've utilized Sign Up Genius a lot where volunteers or parents, if they're not volunteers, could sign up for certain roles. like maybe it's a snack or maybe it's they're responsible for finding the guest speaker or they're responsible for helping with the fun game for that meeting. So you can use some programs where there's sign up ahead of time and it's mapped out for the whole entire year. And sign up genius, something like that would also can be set up to do reminders or you can just check it and send a quick text or email reminder for that person to take on that role. And that's great for both teen officers or teen leaders as well as the volunteers within your group. So we got some comments about yes to sign up genius and a club group is using a Google form to help with RSVPs for meetings to know who's coming for planning purpose. So yeah, something like a Google form can be really helpful for signing up for roles, doing RSVPs so that you have supplies. So again, some other strategies that can be really helpful. So throughout the planning and throughout this presentation, we've of course referenced the importance of including youth in youth voice. So we have a lot of resources. Christine mentioned some previous webinars that you can watch the recordings of. We have one that's totally focused on youth voice. So definitely encourage you to check that out. There's some great articles that we've put out there recently about youth voice and engaging youth voice and some strategies. But for now, I will reference that having their voice as part of the 4-H experience is what really helps young people grow, develop, build their skills. And their ideas and interests should really shape your year. So the virtual club that I'm a part of, I actually ask that as part of an interest form, like what are you interested in learning or finding out more about, what would help you develop as a young person? And I take those ideas to help build out the year and the guest presenters that we have. So if you remember, if you're remembering throughout your planning that having youth led or youth driven education means that you will probably have more engaged members and they will be more active and have more meaningful roles in their planning and leading because it speaks to them. It's not being done to them. It's something that they're involved in. So you can try letting youth lead part of a meeting. They can vote on those service projects. They can help plan an event. They can have those roles that we've talked about earlier as well, where maybe they're sharing the opportunities or they're leading the icebreaker fun activity as part of the meeting. Having those officer roles that Michelle mentioned for successful outcomes and having youth vote on those positions can be really powerful and important, too, for youth voice. Remember that when you feel that ownership, feel that belonging, feel that sense of commitment to the group, they definitely are more invested. And then they learn those leadership skills in the process. So, again, that should be a focus as part of your planning for the year. So we also, you know, on our roadmap through this planning of the year, we also want to make sure we somehow in our year think about how can we do this celebration or reflection. And I would say that reflection a lot of times happens, it may not have been just at the end of the year, it may happen throughout the year. But we also want to make sure that we are intentional about making sure that we try to celebrate the many great things our kids have accomplished, the hard work they've put into their projects and the growth that has happened. So having an end of the year celebration is really important. I know many counties right now are going through a county celebration at a county level. You can do that at a club level as well. Reflect on, again, the work they've done, how they've improved. Maybe they had some major hardships in their project in their year, but really talking about how they have worked through those projects, those type of things. It's fun to like do a sticky wall or a dot voting on getting feedback or how things worked. I know one activity that I've done in the past for reflection after something is I in the winter, it's called a snowball fight. They have to write down one thing on a piece of paper, crumple it up in a piece and throw it. And then they have to find a piece, a piece of snow and walk in and read like, what is it something that somebody got out of that event or that activity type of thing? very simple, doesn't cost any money, but it's a way for kids to reflect on, think about, okay, what did I experience? So we're curious on like what you might do in your clubs that celebrate and or slash have a reflection in your club. So what are some things that you might do in your club that celebrates the kids and also has some opportunities for reflection? Bonfire. Oh, that sounds cool. Where they had reflection time regarding their fair and recently wrapped up. Yeah. Pizza party and talk about what they liked. Food is always good. Ice cream social. That's fun. Okay. First couple of meetings after our pledges, we highlight success members that throughout the month. So like, well, maybe some things. A kudos game where they answer questions on our year. A kahoot, not kudos, sorry. A kahoot game. Kahoot is really popular. A lot of kids like kuhu if you haven't ever used that that's kind of fun they some another club sets their august meeting as a celebration and they get to um learn about the year and what they might want to do reflect on for the next year so also great great ideas um when it comes to taking that intentional time to be like okay where can i put reflection and celebration into my club so also we want to make sure that we're tracking and keeping, you know, up on our, our staying on track as far as our club. And I, we know that, um, even the best laid plans, things are going to change, right? We have to be flexible. That's part of extension. That's part of 4 -H. It's part of who we are. We have to be prepared to adjust and change as needed. Um, having those backup plans. Um, it's important to have some maybe regular check-ins with some of your officers or your youth or even some of your parents to be like, hey, this is how things are going or these are how some of the feelings we're having. We might need to adjust. But it's important that you continue with that communication and that consistency. So using those texts or newsletters or shared calendars to keep everyone informed and up to date so that they know. If you need contact information from families, make sure you reach out to your PCs. They can be they should be able to get you addresses and phone number or phone numbers for sure to like use utilize so you can communicate with your clubs. But as we know, again, weather comes, illnesses come, cancellations, all that kind of stuff happens. We want you to just continue to stay on track, continue to remember the whole year plan, your goal. And yeah, if you don't have a meeting for one month because of an illness, then either reschedule that meeting or just go focus on that next meeting that you had planned and what was doing and that type of thing. Another thing we want to just continue to encourage you, and we're so happy to have you here today, is to continue to keep learning. Attend webinars to kind of advance yourself in knowledge when it comes to club development, um 4-H in general anything that it might be connect with your 4-H program coordinator they have again lots of resources ideas they also could come to meetings um but learn alongside your kids as they're developing life skills as they're developing new things um learn with them and explore with them and do that with them it's not just about that project but it's also about them learning and you're learning with them. Like we suggested, sign up for the new digest. That kind of gives you some more ideas. We write news articles all the time or refreshing news articles all the time about topics that we think volunteers might be helpful for you to use in your meetings or in your everyday life. So you could get notes about when those come. attend workshops. There's normally workshops offered around. But we also like leader meet is another thing that we've had before. And we have offered where volunteers can come and learn from other volunteers and gain some skills. So another important thing would be to talk to volunteers, ask other volunteers in your county or surrounding counties, hey, I really like this idea? What do you think? We're here together as a whole to try to create a great experience for our 4-Hers. So I encourage you to keep learning. So we want to take a moment to thank you for being part of this webinar today.