Project Grading, Hard Work or Fun?

In case you have not figured it out, Robeson County 4-H loves our dedicated and helpful group of adult volunteers. When we call they jump up and take the challenge for us and we are always in debt to them. Yesterday was not different as six of our volunteers stepped forward to help us judge project records for another county. In January 4-H volunteers from Cumberland County as well as their new County Extension Director came down to Robeson County to judge our records. In return we offered to judge theirs. So a call went out at the end of last week for anyone interested to come and judge.

We were thrilled to have Tanya Underwood, Veronica Powell, Libby Burney, Sonny Sampson, Kenneth Bethea and Marilyn Merritt join us for grading. Kenneth and Marilyn are experienced project record graders. Libby has experience from Florida and it did not take her long to catch on to the North Carolina way of project record grading. Sonny, Veronica and Tanya were first timers and willing to jump in and try it. With experienced members surrounding them we judged all 40 of their project records in six hours. Penny McCartney and Shea Ann DeJarnette had the distinct honor of writing notes to each of the cloverbuds on their wonderful project records and Tanya also helped out with those.

Although the process took a little longer than most of the first timers thought it would, it gave them a good idea of how a project record should look and ideas on how to go about getting their 4-Her's to do one. As Marilyn said, "Pay attention because your kids need to do one now for next year!" We are looking forward to some excellent project records at the end of the year and this is the perfect time for members to get started writing everything down to make it easier when the deadline comes at the end of the year.

We would like to say thank you to the Cumberland County Volunteers for judging our records, and a special thank you to our volunteers for judging theirs. 4-H Volunteers ROCK!