4-H (National 4-H Council, Cooperative Extension Youth Development)

4-H is a youth development program in the United States that reaches young people through local clubs, camps, school activities, and county fairs. It is run through the Cooperative Extension System, a partnership between the United States Department of Agriculture, more than one hundred land-grant universities, and county offices in every state. The website at this address is operated by National 4-H Council, the nonprofit organization that supports the program nationally, raises private funding, and produces curriculum and materials used by clubs. By its own count the program involves close to six million young people between the ages of five and twenty-one, which makes it the largest youth development organization in the country.

Origins and history

The activities that became 4-H grew out of rural club work at the start of the twentieth century. A.B. Graham started a youth club in Clark County, Ohio, in 1902, and similar corn clubs and tomato clubs formed in other states around the same time. These early groups gave farm children practical projects in growing crops and preserving food, often teaching methods that their parents had been slower to adopt. The clubs also connected local schools with the agricultural research being done at the new land-grant colleges.

From club work to a national program

The scattered clubs became a national effort in 1914, when Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act and created the Cooperative Extension Service within the Department of Agriculture. The charter for that service folded in the existing boys' and girls' club work tied to agriculture and home economics, giving the clubs a permanent home inside the federal and university system. The phrase "4-H club" appeared in a federal document in 1920, and by 1924 the clubs were formally organized under that name.

The four H's and the emblem

The name points to four personal qualities the program tries to develop: head, heart, hands, and health. The emblem is a green four-leaf clover with a white H on each leaf, a design credited to O.H. Benson in 1907 and adopted alongside the 4-H name. The 4-H pledge, written by the Kansas leader Otis Hall and adopted across the country in 1927, reads in part that a member pledges the head to clearer thinking, the heart to greater loyalty, the hands to larger service, and the health to better living, for club, community, country, and world. The closing words "and my world" were added in 1973.

How 4-H is organized

4-H sits inside a three-part structure that mirrors the Extension system itself. At the federal level the program is led by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an agency of the Department of Agriculture, which also houses the office known as 4-H National Headquarters. At the state level each land-grant university runs its own 4-H program and trains the staff and volunteers who work with young people. At the local level, county Extension offices and thousands of volunteer leaders carry the daily work of running clubs and projects. This arrangement means that a child in one county and a child two thousand miles away can take part in the same program while working with adults from their own community.

The role of National 4-H Council

National 4-H Council is the private, nonprofit partner to the public Extension system. It does not run clubs directly. Instead it raises money from companies, foundations, and individuals, manages the 4-H name and clover as registered marks, publishes project curriculum, and organizes national programs and events. The Council moved its headquarters from Chevy Chase, Maryland, where it had operated for about sixty years, to downtown Washington after the sale of its longtime conference center. Its work lets the county-based program keep a national identity and shared materials without depending only on public money.

Programs and activities

The learning young people do in 4-H is organized around projects, which are structured areas of study a member chooses and works on over time, often presenting the results at a county or state fair. The subject areas reach well beyond the program's farm origins.

• Agriculture and animal science, including raising livestock and growing crops
• Science, technology, engineering, and math work such as robotics and rocketry
• Healthy living, covering nutrition, fitness, and mental health
• Family and consumer sciences, including cooking, sewing, and personal finance
• Leadership and civic engagement

Members take part through community clubs, in-school and after-school clubs, day and overnight camps, and short-term special interest groups. Older teenagers can attend national gatherings that bring the program together across state lines. National 4-H Congress, held in Atlanta during the Thanksgiving period since 1998, gathers members roughly between fourteen and nineteen for several days of workshops and service. National 4-H Conference meets in the Washington area and gives youth a chance to work on questions of public policy, while Citizenship Washington Focus runs week-long sessions on government and citizenship for high school students.

Place in a society and people directory

4-H belongs in a directory of society and civic organizations because it is one of the older and larger frameworks through which American young people take part in community life. It ties together public agencies, universities, county governments, and a national nonprofit into a single program aimed at teaching practical skills and civic responsibility. A parent looking for a local club, a volunteer wanting to lead a project, a teacher planning a school activity, or a teenager interested in a national service event can trace all of those paths back to this organization and the county Extension network behind it.

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