What a week it has been! After leaving our incredible volunteers Friday night Yazmin Washington, Cierra Buckman and I headed to Raleigh early Saturday morning for 4-H State Council Conference. The two day event offers workshops in leadership areas and is also a chance for youth from around the state to get together to make decisions concerning the 4-H program state wide. There is also a battle for the state spirit stick which involves, skits, chants, and a whole lot of mystery points. Before we could even look at our schedules Yazmin, Cierra and DeAngelo Byrd from Scotland County, video taped a shout out for our Military troops stationed abroad and wrote messages on a banner that will be sent to them.
Cierra jumped into the swing of things first. She signed up for the Ambassador track of this conference. What that means is that she was learning about the 4-H Ambassador program and taking workshops to obtain her bronze level. 4-H Ambassadors are highly trained 4-H leaders. They teach workshops, recruit members and volunteers, and help make a difference in their community. By Sunday afternoon she had attended all the classes she needed to obtain her first level and now she is working on her portfolio and community service hours so she can move on to the silver level. There are four levels to the ambassador program, bronze, silver, gold, and emerald.
Yazmin was signed up for the straight track. What that means is she had the opportunity to attend workshops on a variety of topics including using play dough and Lego's to teach groups life skills, how to make thank you notes, media relations, public speaking, Geo caching and much more.
As part of the event the youth attend a state recognition banquet Saturday night. Yazmin was presented with the South Central District Volunteer Award for all of the work she does in her community thru 4-H, Girl Scouts, her church and school. It was a big shock for her but she seemed tickled pink (or should we say green) about it.
Please don't think I was kicked back and relaxing. While they were attending workshops and meetings I was teaching two workshops for silver and gold level ambassadors. This is a photo of the youth in the media one workshop they learned about doing interviews and writing press releases as well as how the media works. I charged them with downloading the photo and writing a press release for their county 4-H Agents to promote what 4-H is doing in our state. The second workshop involved youth learning about how to meet and greet lawmakers, donors and other important folks to 4-H. They had the opportunity to learn everything from how to dress for a meeting to how to make an appointment and how to make the most of their time with them. They were incredibly fun groups and I am looking forward to seeing everything they accomplish, as well as all that Cierra and Yazmin do with all that they learned over the weekend. As you can see from the photos we had a really great time in Raleigh, as well as the opportunity to learn.
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