Youth Engaement in 4-H Experiences

November 27, 2023

Strategies to help leaders increase the level of youth engagement in their 4-H experiences.

Video Transcript

So I'd like to welcome everyone today to our Michigan four H volunteer webinar series on youth engagement in the four H experiences. I'm Christine, Really? I'm an extension educator based in the Clinton County Extension Office. And my role is on our volunteer team on how we train and support volunteers across the state of Michigan. And I have Janelle Stewart with me. And let her give a quick introduction. Good afternoon everyone. I'm Janelle Stewart and I'm an extension educator with the four program obviously. But I have a split role of doing program coordination for lay county and also I do leadership, civic and cultural engagement work statewide as part of my educator role in that. And we're excited that you're all with us today and going to spend a part of your potentially your lunch hour looking at how we build that youth engagement into our forage experiences. Msu Extension believes fully in the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion. We know that human differences enrich our lives. Work in community. We embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are committed to providing programs to all segments of the community. It is also important to understand the longstanding history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us to reside on the land and to seek understanding our place within that history and the land acknowledgment on the screen is one step in that process. One of the other steps in that process is we like to collect the demographics on our participants in programs to help show that we are meeting parity across the state of Michigan. For the volunteers that we serve in the Four H program, put a short demographic survey in the chat. If you wouldn't mind please clicking on that and taking a moment to fill that out for us. That would be greatly appreciated. This has been part of a series that we have been hosting in 2023. We've done five other topics that have recordings available on our volunteer webinar series web page. I will put that link in the chat a little bit later during the webinar so that you can have that and come back to it. But we will be exciting to share your, the first group to hear this. We'll be offering the webinar series again in 2024. And we have the first two dates in topic set on January 23. We're going to look at teaching science when you don't know Diddley squat. It'll be based on learning some science activities and lesson plans that you can use in your forage experiences. When you don't have a science background, there are a lot of really fun and easy activities you can do. And the other one is going to be an animal science focus, that's on February 7. The topics for March and April and May are also set, but those dates are not set in March, we're going to look at group management and forage settings. In April we're going to look at clover but experiences and how to help you if you work with clover but. And then in May, we are going to look at giving you tips and tools to prepare for ages, for fair and showcase events. How to prepare them for those judging experiences. What kinds of things can you do to really expand the learning for them? More information will come on those as those dates get set, it'll be the same set up that zoom registration with the engagement through the webinar, and they'll all be on that volunteer webinar series. They'll also all be recorded. If you miss it, you can come back and watch a recording to get us started. Today we're going to do a quick little ice breaker. What I'm going to have you do, we're going to do this as a waterfall chat. Which means I'm going to ask you to type your answer in the chat, but don't press inter until I say so. And this is to help us start to think about that age of teenagers and that youth engagement piece. What activities were you doing when you were 15? Take a moment to type in the chat on the activities that you were doing when you were 15. A press enter. All we have people who are doing sports and science stuff, hanging out with friends for H bowling and working, sports crafts, market animals, gardening, soccer choir, youth group at church running track, showing and fares, and FA sports faith group going to the mall. Band, student clubs, four H sports, baby sitting, camping, playing games with friends in sports, showing livestock, sports sports, and four H playing chess, reading about atomic theory particles, reading science fiction, novel books. Awesome. Now, the next part of this question, who are the most important people when you were 15? Again, who are the most important people when you were 15? Put those into the chat and I'll tell you when to press now. All right. Press inter. Let's see, most important people, when you were 15. Friends, friends, family, friends, parents and friends, grandparents, friends, mom, dad, youth group, leaders, parents, my friends, my teachers, friends, coaches, leaders, friends, friends, family, sisters, teach. Parents, siblings, mom and relatives, parents, grandparents, parents, friends, coaches. There's a commonality here that's really important as we start to think about youth engage. How to build that youth engagement to our forage experiences. We have to do it around the things that you are excited about and get them excited and they enjoy doing, but it also needs to involve their friends. This is the stage of their life where you start to want to spend more time with their friends or some of the most important people to them. That's where they want to be engaged. That's who they want involved with it. They don't necessarily always want to do activities if their friends are not involved with it or have a part of it. We have to think about as we look at this whole big picture on youth engagement and age experiences that we build in those ways that their friends are there with them and doing it with them because that's what makes them excited because they want to spend more and more time with their friends. It also comes down to when we think about youth engagement, we have to start with where that spark is. That's where their passion is. All youth have a spark. And that's that metaphor that describes something that's internal to each of us, that gives us meaning or joy. One of the things that's really important to know is that by age ten, all youth understand the concept of having a spark. But one third of adolescents in the US do not actually know what their sparks are. An even greater number don't have a spark champion. What that means is that they don't know what gets them excited or what makes their eyes light up. Or is something that they're super passionate about. That's where for a truly can come in. We can help figure out what those sparks are and help build those pieces. As leaders, you can be one of those spark champions. For them to help them support and pursue through their sparks. To do that, sometimes as they get older, we have to have their friends there because that's who they want to have relationships with. When their friends are there, they might explore additional sparks that they have and work through those. It's really that piece. We have to know what youth are excited about. Because if they're not excited about something, they don't come, they don't want to be there, they might come. If their friends are really excited about it and their friends can convince them, we got to figure out the way to weave it all together for them. The sparks serve as that motivation and meaning and self direction for youth. Because as I look, think back to what you all said is some of the things that you were doing when you were 15. My guess is some of them where you're sparks. There was one what was about science? There was a science one that I was like playing chess and reading about atomic theory and particles. There's got to be a spark there to want to spend time doing that. There are so many people showing livestock or doing band or different sports and clubs. Those are all potentially areas where youth has a spark through those things. You can really develop a lot of skills and be successful. The more that we engage youth in learning about those things and as part of those through a positive youth development experience, the better opportunities they are for them. As a spark champion, you can just service, help them see what they are, point them out to them, and help them form the relationships to be successful in those sparks. Now, as we look in for age, the foundation to, to thrive is high quality forage program settings. It's a place where they can explore those personal sparks. They can develop those developmental relationships with youth and other adults. But the biggest thing that's going to help youth on that thriving path towards success is having them be engaged them, taking an active role in their forage experiences. And having that opportunity through those opportunities. Once we find those sparks and we build that belonging in those relationships. So that sparks what they're passionate about, that belonging. Their friends are there. There's other people they enjoy there. They're forming those relationships. And as we give them opportunities to take on leadership roles or be engaged or make decisions about what's happening, we are pushing them on a path to thriving. We started today just a few short minutes ago with what it was like, what you were doing when you were 15. Now we're going to give you another opportunity to just reflect for a minute and think back to those activities that you listed earlier in the chat. Think about why you were involved in those things. What was the reason that you looked at the Atomic whatever that it was? Or why did you show livestock? Or why were you inquired? Why were you in band? What was that that drove you to be involved in those activities? Just take a minute and then we're going to have you do it. To chat again, write in why you got involved in the activities that you did. What sparked you to get involved? They come in so fast here. Yeah. Family history, right? Your family has always done that. It's passed on to you from your generational types of things. Saving money to buy a car. Yeah, it was a spark. It was a decision. It was something that you had a goal that you wanted to be involved in. Hanging with friends at the ball, Caring adults is why you wanted to get involved. People not athletic. You wanted to be involved with the people that you were there. Family, friends, got you involved in. You got that spark hanging with friends to the lack of parental involvement. Yeah, absolutely. Again, those friends are so important at this age and we can't ignore that. We need to embrace it and we need to look at how we can continue to engage youth by opening up things for friends to come along. Belonging, praise for others. Yeah, that positive reinforcement. Positive feedback. The concept of what youth or positive youth development is built on. Let's see. Good at running, liked animals, being part of the group. That's why you got involved with that school. School involvement. Yeah. School is very important and part of that school is because you're spending 67, 8 hours a day with peers and friends that can make or break you depending on that school relationship and those peer relationships. So watching the marching band as a younger child always loved animals. Great parents encouraged me. Church friends, school involvement teachers. So yeah, so I was reading about Atomic Theory because I spent two entire summers in a cast after orthopedic surgery couldn't easily get around. So thanks Paul for that. Yeah, You know a reason, right? Again, there was a reason. It became a passion. And so someday we'll have to sit down and see what that's led you to, um, in now, in your adult life, right? So, yeah, so all of these things have led for your spark. Maybe it continued into your adulthood, maybe it didn't. But I had a great opportunity, Just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the spectacular youth leadership conference. I don't know if you guys were aware of that or saw the promotional things that came about, but it was a three day leadership opportunity for teens where they came together from all over the state of Michigan and had an opportunity to do community service because that's an important part of leadership, as well as to learn leadership skills. We had teens that help taught sessions at it, and they had an opportunity to spend time on campus to look at their future goals, possibilities of what they would like to do in the future as well. But most importantly, I had teens from all over the state of Michigan, captive audience and the ability to ask them why they get engaged in the activities that they do. At their age. Right now it's 15. What do they have to say? Is this right here? Um, first and foremost, I will say, didn't put in the pretty boxes and things like that. Food, Food was super important to teenagers. So as we look and think about engaging our young people, oh, it isn't there. Sorry, I was thinking we didn't. But you know, how do we involve food? You know, it's important to teens, so what is it that we can do? And I know that as we work and we do club activities, I'm a person who has allergies. Food allergies. I'm a pain in someone's rear. I do know that because of my food allergies. But I also think and see that's super important to kids. So how do we work and continue to work around that and what are those things that we can offer them in our activities so that they are included and food becomes a part of it. But they also talked about the fact that they have the passion, much of what each one of you guys put in here, that you were passionate, you were interested. They also want to get involved and do activities and be engaged in programs that they are passionate about. How do we know what those passions are? And we're going to talk about that in a little bit because it's really as simple as asking them. We'll go in a little bit further details here in a minute. But they also want to do hands on projects. They talked very much about. They go to school, they're lectured at, they're talked to a lot. They really appreciate what four H offers as far as hands on learning, hands on projects. But that also excites them. They're more apt to come to a program, They're more apt to come to a club meeting. They're more apt to get engaged if they know that they get to do that hands on type of work. They also want to be involved in the decision making. Again, simple. Think about, we built four H on this, on youth being involved in their decision making, but we're not always really good at it. Sometimes as adults we decide what is best for the kids versus asking them what they think. Having and creating atmospheres for the kids to be involved in decision making is very important to them. They want to make a difference. That difference can be in their community and within themselves. When asked and pushed a little bit about the community, their community is as small as a four H club, as big as an entire town city and school. And so don't be afraid when we're looking at what we're making a difference. Asking what that means, being, accepting, and going back to the old quote that we can change the world one person at a time when they're wanting to look at making a difference. It's okay that it's super small. It's okay that it could be bigger. We did community service that weekend with the kids, where we picked up garbage in the park. We did not do a good job of asking the kids what they wanted to do for community service. We created it for them so we had to work a little bit harder to get their interest. And they said in the future, they would really like to be involved in making decisions on what community service project we did. All right, listen. That's what we had to do. Listen next in the future, that'll be a discussion we'll have with the teams. What do you want? Is your community service, not what we think. Again, when you have some of the older teams, they're looking at resume building, then this was a challenge that the kids had. When they had a conversation, someone said, well, I want to build my resume And they're like, well then are you really getting involved in things because you really want to be involved? Are you looking at building your resume? I love the conversation that they had because it's both right when you're a junior and senior in high school, or junior and senior in college, or a heck now, even as an adult and you're looking at career changes or involvement in different things, you're building a resume. And it's important that we do build resumes. And that was important that they have skills, they do things that will look good on a resume. And I applaud the kids who are honest about that because they are looking at a future. And that's again what we hope that we've done in our four H has sparked them to look at their future and what they can do also. And this is not my words. People look at this cloud up here in the right one, truly the blue cloud, it says life skills. That was their words. They want to be involved in things that will give them skills for their future, for their life, things that will help move them into adulthood. So these are the things that the youth talked about, why they want to get involved. What drives them to get involved? Again, I give them great kudos for their thought process because as many of us put over here, and I would've done the same thing, right? I joined Four H when I was nine because that was the age then, not 85, but nine because my parents. It's a generational thing for my family. But the things I did in Four H was because of somebody helped me. A spark. Someone offered me an opportunity to explore my own interests and involvement. I had adults in my life that were caring enough that gave us the opportunity to be those leaders in our group and ask us those questions. And involved us in that, in our own decision making. Because ultimately that's what we're going to talk about here in just a minute is the youth voice component of it. One thing, over the three days that we had these kids from all over the state of Michigan, as far as the count, because bottom county in the state, Dtm dwellers all the way to our upper peninsula of people that cross the bridge that come join us in counties everywhere in between, overwhelmingly these youth said very loud and clear at the conference that they want to make a difference and they want to be involved in the decisions that will make a difference. This was followed up with the other night. We had a state youth leadership council meeting. We do those on Sunday nights, once a month with the kids across the state who are involved in that. That was the one thing that they also were talking about is the importance of their voice being heard and their voice being involved. This excites me very much because one of the guiding principles, I'm sure that many of you guys have seen them, but is the one guiding principle that I love the most is youth are responsible for their own growth and development. This is what they're also asking for. They may not have it in those terms or those words, but that's what they're asking about and asking for having youth who are ready to talk. I asked them to what they wanted to see in their county and in their state, for each program. Again, giving them the opportunity, that voice. And this is what they told us. If you see yourself in your county already in here, take a moment to applaud yourself. If you don't see yourself in here, then take a moment to reflect on how maybe we can move towards some of these things. Teen groups, they're looking for a social atmosphere. They would like to have an opportunity to us hang with their teens or their peers. We know this across many avenues that this is important to kids. Teenagers, specifically, can we and our local county four H programs develop and build a time for kids in a safe environment to just hang. We had a capital experience steering committee just last night and one of the things that we took into that meeting was, how are we going to give kids at capital experience an opportunity to hang with each other? Because it's important. Again, just ask you and think about where your local programs fall in this because this is what the kids are saying. Team leadership programming, an opportunity in the local as well as in the state, for them to build their leadership skills and hone them in and practice them. As you flip to the other side of the circle, youth driven associations. I've learned this in the years that I've worked here. Many programs in our county level for H councils, we have horse and pony boards. We have junior livestock associations. We have small animal, any types of different councils, boards and committees, you call them. And we've spent a lot of time looking at these across the state and find that many of them are all adults. I call that adult four H because it's adults coming together to make the decisions. And we can have a great discussion in the future regarding youth being overly busy and things like that and why they don't come to meetings. But also we're going to go back and challenge that kids want to be involved in meaningful roles, meaningful relationships, and have a purpose. And they show up to things they would love to see us have a more presence where youth are actually making the decisions in these areas, in static areas and livestock areas. In our horse programs, what do they want to see? Can that be at the county level? Absolutely. Can it be at the state level? Absolutely. At the state level, we're going to talk about how we bring those groups back, our advisory groups for programmings at the state level and involve a youth in that. They also talked about teen commission. This was something that someone brought up that they have in our county and it really interests them. And that was getting involved in the political arena of county commissioners, city commissioners, and how can they learn more about that? How can they be involved in that? We have a couple of programs in counties that are doing that, but it just requires a caring adult who's willing to help us replicate that in another area. But I thought it was really interesting to hear teens talk about wanting to get involved to political arena at that age. Something I never thought of, never would have dreamed of doing when I was a kid. But obviously more aware. County ambassadors. County ambassadors are looking at them being a spokesperson. What better way to recruit youth to be in our four H program than to send youth out to talk about our four H programs? And so that's what county ambassadors can do. They get trainings on how to be that, how they go out, how they recruit, how they ask caring adults to be involved in their four age program, as well as youth to get involved. Because the youth are very important. We do not have in the state of Michigan or any place that I know the requirement for club officers, and I will say there's reasons for them. Absolutely. I encourage you that I grew up in a four age program, they're club officers, but I also can look at the realistic aspect that not all clubs operate in that same way, but that was something that they all thought was very important to them, is to continue to have that leadership role by doing club officers. All of this equates to they really truly want, they want to have more say. They want to be able to have a voice. They want to be able to be involved. What we do know is that the more involved they are, the more say they have. And the more meaningful roles that they have, the more engagement they will have into all of our programming areas. A couple of key points there when you're wanting to get people involved is making sure there's meaningful roles for them. They have a say, they feel valued and appreciated. Actually, when they're all done, I'm going to just take a minute or two here and think about how we could possibly flush out one of these ideas. How could we and our county programs at the state level, I'm going to pick one. Get more youth involved on councils, boards, and committees. If you could take a moment into the chat and just think about that and type in what do you think we could do to get you more involved and how we could recruit them to be on our councils, boards, and committees. If you already have them, share best practice. If you don't, what's your thought on how we can get them involved? Not a waterfall. Thank you, Katrina. Be flexible with times and locations of meeting. Absolutely. I love groups. My favorite things to do in my trainings, which we're going to talk about here in a minute, youth and adult partnership is they want youth voice. But they'll only hold meetings at 10:00 in the morning. Not going to happen. Right? Kids are they're in school. Make sure there's more than one. It is not a token. You absolutely review your bylaws to ensure that youth are able to join and participate. Stacy? Yes, we just went through that with you. Thank you for putting that in there. Very much so, yes. Ask the youth to identify others who might want to serve, you know, creating a space. Julie, that what you said is that, you know what, We have one team. My four H counsel currently is really light on teens, so right now I'm saying bring a friend. I don't care who they are. Bring a friend, you know, and I have one right now that's saying well, she's not of age because our by laws say that. Whoa, okay. We're gonna look at our by laws and maybe we're not going to change them, but she can still come because we're open to all. She may not end up with a vote at that moment, but really, what do we vote that's important that we can't involve them to come. Jessica, we just recruited three youth to our council by talking about having a say and how we grow. Yes. Sheboygan, Four H program. Absolutely. Resume building life, skill, voice, all of those things tracts them. Right. So you got three youth. Awesome. They're create atmospheres for them to feel valued, truly give them a say. Let them be involved then yeah, they'll bring another three in the future. Yeah. Have a way for comments in the written form. Absolutely. Allow them to have feedback. You guys are all hitting on exactly what we need to do as far as getting them involved. When I say, when I talk about having meaningful roles as well, I've loved, over the years, I've had a great opportunity to work with many different counties. And they're like, well, kids can come to these councils, boards and committees, but they can't hold an office. I challenge people, but why can't they hold an office? What prevents them from being the officer of your four each council? Now, if your council is called leaders, then I challenge, why are we only just doing leaders? There's some great thoughts and comments and all that that kids can have. But again, that's a whole different topic. But yeah, having them be involved, getting them involved, asking their input, and giving them all the same meaningful roles. Have kids do anything different than you would have adults to do to join your groups. It's important to look at it that way too. Is that if you ask an adult to fill out an application to belong to your council, then fine. If you don't ask an adult to fill out an application, don't ask a youth because they're no difference. They have the ability to call out. And here Janelle is rotate leadership of a group meeting. Among those attending that it might be that they have to see themselves being able to do it. Sometimes depending on a youths confidence level, they want to see themselves being able to do it and they want to try it on and decide if it's for them rotate that leadership so that they have the opportunity to be engaged. And maybe they'll decide, oh my gosh, I love this, or oh, this is not the leadership role for me, I should not take this on, and they'll find something else. The other one is Reach out to youth and explain the role and why you think they might be a good fit. That is such a good thing as a spark champion is you're calling out, you know what, I think you'll be good at this, this is why. But then also followed up with, I think you might want to. What other friend do you think would be good with this with you? So they come with a friend and that's an engagement experience for them. Yeah. And Chris, it is so true because if we go back to, again, the very beginning of when we started all of this, we got involved because there's a generational thing for many of us. Your family did it. So it's the same thing. Someone encouraged you, Someone asked. And so as a volunteer, you don't be afraid to make that personal call to a youth and say, hey, I think you'd be really good to attend the State Youth Leadership Conference. So please go, because it's giving that confidence, that's what they're looking for, that's what they need is that personal touch, that personal engagement there too. So with all of these things, as we look at these and explore how we can create engagement based on what the teens want to be engaged in. What we're really talking about is a concept called Youth and Adult Partnership. This next screen here tells you, Chris, there we go. The definition of youth and adult partnership. What? Youth? Adult partnership is a fostered relationship between youth and adults, where both parties have equal potential in making decisions, utilizing skills, mutual learning, and independently carrying out tasks to reach common goals. When I talk about lifting youth up, giving them the opportunity to be a leader, I'm not asking any adult to not walk with them. Some of the strongest and the best opportunities that youth have is when the adults walk with them, not in front of them, and not do things for them. Also, though, not taking such a step back so far back that they can't have some success and help them additionally with youth and adult partnerships. The next screen here, we'll tell you a little bit about that. It integrates youths and this is why we should do youth adult partnership. I should say it this way. It integrates youth realistic perspective and skills with professional adults, experience and wisdom. So that's what I mean, walking side by side, they don't bring any garbage. I've sat in meetings where the youth are talking about doing something. I literally went like this and this is going to be a nightmare for me. But you know what, they want to try it. So sometimes I'm absolutely right, it was a nightmare for me. But the youth learn. There's other times that it was like, wow, it succeeded now, but it didn't 20 years ago. Well, new generation new people, right? Youth Adult Partnership offers each party the opportunity to make suggestions and decisions. It also recognizes the values and contributions of each, and it allows youth and adults to work in full partnership, envisioning developing, implementing, evaluating programs. So I just absolutely love this photo here where talk to a young person, they know cool stuff you don't, which is very true. There's lots of youth that have great ideas and know stuff that we don't. We think we do, but we don't. And then I like talk to old people, they know cool stuff you don't know. That is the bigger picture of youth and adult partnership, which is what the Four H program here in Four H that we can hold our hats and strong on because a lot of other youth development organizations do things for kids, not with them. And so you see the slight difference there, that we want to have a program and for each that we are known for doing things with kids walking side by side with them. And I will say this before we wrap up because I will say if you're interested in more training on youth and adult partnerships, which will go further into those meaningful roles and what are the barriers and how to break down those barriers. We can do that, We can schedule it as one of the webinars next year. But it's very important for youth and the engagement that they are going to come and why they're going to stay involved in our program is the opportunity to work alongside with the caring adult, forge their own pathway. We hope that pathway is forged with that spark that we talked about earlier. As we move to some of the wrap up pieces, we always find it's valuable to learn from each other and on things that have worked well for each of us. Take a moment to share the chat ideas that you might have around youth engagement. I have one that I'm going to share that Julie shared in the chat force already when she was in middle school youth group. Someone said to her that when I was in high school group I would be a leader. It was never, if it was when the expectation was set, it's about flipping the language. It's like when It is really flip that language when you are calling that out, that's being person. That middle school youth group was a spark champion for you. They called out something they saw in you that was good and said when, I think we can do that with all youth is really saying when you can take this leadership role on, when you can take on this engagement, when you can teach this skill. Because not everyone wants to do full out leadership. But maybe when you can share your passion on robotics with the rest of the club, all those different pieces. Are there some examples that people have already seen that's really made youth feel engaged in their clubs or their four H experiences. You've heard what Janelle heard directly from our youth. You've heard some of the research and the background behind things. But now what's working in your forage experiences, because this helps us all learn too. I know one thing in the forage club that I lead that's really started to increase our youth engagement is that they really wanted to promote for age at the county level. They decided we're doing a Christmas parade float in the local Santa parade, and it is 100% their float. The adults in our club, we're helping some, but we're, they're the ones engaged. They're coming to the float building night. It's giving them is more opportunities to be around their friends. Even our younger you like our eight year olds, they want to be around some of their friends too, and this is their opportunity. They're being engaged. They're getting to build a float. They're being able to promote four H in our local county, but also it's their float. It'll both prayed and you'll know it was designed by kids and adults did not do it, which is great because it should be a four H float. But by letting them take the reins on this project and more of us just standing back and helping problem solve a few things. Like for example, they wanted a giant cover on the back of the float. We started out of cardboard. We now have a wooden clover. It won't fall off on the drive to town, but it was their idea to have the clover. We went alongside, they did the work piece for it. I also have to say Chris, that made me think about when you said that, right? Was that so many of us adults that I've heard over the years have said that floats going to be an embarrassment to the four H program, right? Is it really, though, because there's going to be a large group of people that's going to look at that float and say that was done by a group of kids. That's very cool, and I want my kids to be a part of it. And then it leads into the fact of a question that I did ask the kids. I wasn't going to bring it up here. But one of the things that we hear so often about letting go and allowing youth to have a real true leadership and real youth voice is far one that they won't follow through or they'll drop the ball. I'm just here to say that happens across anywhere from youth to adults, but also they don't want the kids to fail repeatedly. Over many trainings that we've done all the way across the state, adults do not want youth to fail. And I say or even struggle. Youth are not afraid to fail or struggle from their own words. That's where we learn. That's what we talked about over the weekend too. You know what, if we fail at something or we make a mistake, then it's up to us to figure it out, right? And we'll figure it out, we'll correct it, we'll get ourselves out of it. In a sense. Again, all looking at it from the perspective of forget, Paul has a really good thing too here. Customize the transition from a youth being in learning mode to using the learned skill to actually accomplish something useful mode based on each individual's interest, skills and imagination in learning that particular skill. Yeah. Make it about what they want and need and how it's going to be. Help the future. Awesome. Yeah. Criticizing private praise and public. Very important. If you need to talk with a young person regarding something, yeah, pull them aside. But in public praise, we'll give a minute or more more if anyone has additional ideas that they want to share about that's worked in your forage experiences to help other people learn and grow in this experience we're doing that. I'm going to get that link to the webinar page where all of the recordings will be, where the registration links are already for the start of the series next year as we continue on with this and I know we're going to have to have a chance. I think, Chris, right when we're done here to people ask questions and all of that too off the recording. But it, you know, youth engagement has to start with us as volunteers. It has to start with us creating an environment for them to be engaged. It's about asking what they want. And then also helping create environments that they can lead in and they can be involved in. And I think that those are key things that will help us retain those younger youth who are coming to our four each program. Because Mom and Dad wanted them to, or Grandma and Grandpa, or a guardian or the history of their family says go do four H. But creating those avenues, those pathways, finding those sparks, helping them build on those sparks is what's going to keep them all the way through aging out of our four H programs and eventually becoming volunteers like you. And you go back to all of the research and the studies showing that this long term four H program experience is showing a lot of great results. How do we keep them engaged in this long term four H experience? That's by us creating those environments with them, through them, and encouraging them and creating leadership avenues for them. Well, thank you all for being part of today's webinar. When you leave the webinar, a short evaluation will pop up so that you can quickly comp. That helps guide ideas that we do in the future and gives us some feedback. I'm going to stop the recording now.