California 4-H Projects
Project Highlights
4-H Million Trees Project - Belmont 4-H
4-H Volunteer Resources
National 4-H Volunteer Website
California 4-H Volunteer Website
4-H Project Leaders' Digest
4-H Clover Safety Fact Sheets
Learn by Doing
Experiential Learning
4-H Exchange Programs
4-H Member Resources
Curriculum
National 4-H Curriculum
University of California Curriculum
Colorado State University Curriculum
San Mateo County 2007 Agricultural Crop Report
Livestock Judging Guide - Kansas State University
Geospatial Revolution Project - Penn State
Dog Care & Training Project Record Book
Showmanship & Fitting
Showing Swine
4-H Meat Goat Guide
FEMA - Animals in Disaster, Awareness and Preparedness
* UC Update:(November 2008) UC President, Mark Yudof, pledged a greater role for the University of California in finding solutions to the challenges K-12 schools are facing. He said, "To provide higher education access to more California high school students, UC must pay attention to those students long before they begin filling out college applications. The need is urgent. UC Riverside researchers recently studied standardized test data from the California Department of Education and their findings were grim: Nearly all elementary schools in the state will fail to meet the math and language proficiency goals required by a No Child Left Behind deadline in 2014. An estimated one in four California high school students drops out. And according to a UC Santa Barbara study, two years after they should have graduated with the class of 2004, 34 percent of California's high school dropouts were unemployed. To reverse those trends, we must act now."
The 4-H Youth Development Program is the largest University of California off campus youth development program, annually reaching over 130,000 young people from diverse social economic and geographic areas of the state. 4-H has long been a leader in youth preparation. Through findings of The Study of Positive Youth Development conducted by Richard Learner of Tufts University, we know that 4-H makes positive and lasting contributions to lives of young people. Most recently, the findings in this longitudinal study show that young people who participated in 4-H for at least one year by eighth grade "were 3.5 times more likely to contribute to their families, themselves and their communities." But the study also found that eight graders who participated in 4-H programs at least twice per month "had greater confidence and higher grades and were 1.6 times more likely to plan to go to college."
As you, both staff and volunteers, roll out your 4-H YD programs this fall, I ask you to reflect on the ways that your programming is reaching diverse groups of young people with high quality educational opportunities that : 1) provide youth with the supportive environments that support long-term productive interactions with caring adults, 2) focus on skill building and mastery, 3) emphasize the promotion of positive behavior that leads to self-regulation and independence, and 4) offer opportunities to practice generosity through community citizenship and service learning.
4-H can and does play a critical role in preparing young people for a positive life trajectory that includes higher education! Let us commit ourselves to offering this opportunity to more youth in our California communities this coming year!
Do you have great curriculum you would like to share? Do you need curriculum for your project? Email mgmeyer@ucdavis.edu