Operation Military Kids hits home

Operation Military Kids (OMK) is a national partnership between the U. S. Army and other youth partners such as 4-H. In North Carolina OMK is a major initiative with our state 4-H program and is headed by J. Scott Enroughty. This weekend Harnett County 4-H hosted an OMK event with a teen lock in at the Harnett County Center of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Office. About 20 teens from Harnett, Cumberland and Scotland counties took part in the event.

The evening started with cake decorating. The youth had three colors to choose from and decorates their cakes as part of a team exercise. The outcome was incredible. Cakes with messages, artistically defined with fireworks and stars, and showing a positively incredible team efforts. At the end of the activity the teens got prizes for most creative, best leadership and best team effort. Best of all they got to sample their work, and I saw how tasty it was.

After that our very own Robeson County 4-H Extension Agent, Shea Ann DeJarnette worked with the youth on their media savvy. After a brief intro to the media and what makes a good interview the teens decided to create their own television public service announcements. The approaches were varied and topics all had something to do with OMK. You can click here to check out their PSA's. After finishing that project it was 3 a.m. and time for lights out.

After a few hours of sleep the youth went right back at it in the morning. They worked on creating partnerships and continued strengthening their leadership skills. To help each other identify their leadership strengths each youth would fill out a positive leadership card for another youth listing a positive leadership skill they had observed the teen using as part of the exercises. That card was then placed in a bag with the youth's name on it hanging on the wall. At the end of the event the youth had this reminder of what they learned to take home with them.

The event ended after the youth gave presentations on OMK and demonstrated their knowledge, and how they would help military youth deal with the issues of having a deployed parent. For more information about this particular OMK event you can contact Lynn Lambert 4-H Agent at Lynn_Lamert@ncsu.edu. For more information about OMK and other opportunities state wide please contact J. Scott Enroughty at Scott_Enroughty@ncsu.edu.