Muskingum County Celebrates 4-H Youth Development Week

MUSKINGUM COUNTY, Ohio- The Muskingum County 4-H Youth Development program had their annual update meeting today with the County Commissioners. 

4-H is all about teaching young kids from ages five to 18, life and social skills and decision making with a variety of clubs they can participate in.

March 6th to the 12th is dedicated to 4-H week and even though the program already consists of about 1,000 youth, says Jamie McConnell, educator of Muskingum County 4-H, they are still looking for new members. 

“A lot of people associate 4-H with farm life, livestock, but kids can take cooking, clothing, photography, there’s STEM projects like rockets and robotics so there’s a wide variety of things that kids can get involved in,” McConnell stated. “It gives them an opportunity to do some independent exploration of things that they’re interested in outside of school because we don’t tell kids what projects they want to take.”

McConnel said in the course of doing those projects and meeting with their club, they begin to learn communication skills and learn how to work together as a team. 

There’s an overnight 4-H camp for kids ages eight through 13, a cloverbuds day camp, a project exhibit at the County fair and more.

“The way 4-H works is that kids join through a 4-H club and so we have 50 clubs throughout the county and those clubs will meet throughout the year,” McConnell said. “So that’s kind of the key way that kids get involved and clubs will meet anywhere from six to 12 times from now until the end of the calendar year and then we have county wide activities too.”

County Commissioners did provide McConnell with the yearly proclamation for the program and turned the courthouse green in honor of 4-H Youth Development Week. 

The deadline to join is April 1st and for more information on joining, please reach at muskingum.osu.edu or the Facebook page at Ohio State – Muskingum County 4-H.