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Community Corner

Is 4-H Only About Farm Animals and Trees? Nope

Here's a little background on what the 4-H Club is all about and what else I do besides planting trees.

True or False? 4-H is all about robotics, rocketry and reforesting San Bruno.   

What about dogs, duct tape, archery, web design or quilting? 

While I'm getting my final list of trees together, I figured that it might be a good time to let folks know a little about 4-H. 4-H clubs are youth-led organizations open to kids from 7 years old to 19 years old. (5-19 in Belmont).    
When some people think about 4-H, they think that it's all about raising animals, or making jam for the San Mateo County Fair. I understand where that comes from, but it's not really a good description of what being a 4-H'er offers today.  

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Back during the 1920s and 1930s, 4-H started as a way to try to get the latest farming and home management ideas out from the agriculture research universities and home economics labs into the hands of the farmers and their wives. 

While 4-H does have a great tradition of helping kids learn life skills in farming, cooking and sewing, it's not limited to these at all. I've actually spent only two years on an animal project. I learned about rabbits and had my own named Pace. But then I got allergic, so that was that.  

To me, 4-H has meant leathercrafting, archery, rocketry, GPS hiking, lots of cooking and handcrafting projects, public speaking projects and, of course, trees. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Every club (San Bruno has a 4-H club; here's a link to their website) is a little different. Projects reflect what families know or are interested in teaching to their club's 4H'ers.

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San Bruno is really strong in robotics, animation, and dog and garden projects, in addition to the more typical animal and other projects. Belmont had a long stretch of not doing a lot of animal projects (except horses, goats and rabbits). Instead we had a lot of craft, cooking, sewing and quilting projects together with rocketry, thanks to a NASA dad. Fishing is a new addition this year that my brother is really excited about. 

San Carlos offers a lot of projects I wanted to take, like riflery, off-road biking, archery, duct tape and woodworking. Duct tape is so cool as a project that more clubs have started to offer it. It's really popular. It's all just a question of time.  

Project meetings generally happen once a month, in addition to the monthly general community meeting. Kids run the meetings and the club, helped by an adult community leader.  

My parents like the idea that we can do and learn things together if we want, or that it only costs $25 to $35 a year, depending on the club. My mom uses the example of a $250 eight-week sewing course as why you'd consider joining 4-H. 

Or, now that I'll be in high school soon, she mentions the scholarships that 4H offers to graduating seniors. I'm kind of interested in doing an international exchange with another 4H'er in another country, myself. 

4-H offers different chances to learn and grow, depending on what is your passion or spark. Mine is planting trees, obviously.

So that's more than you probably ever wanted to know about 4-H. Check it out for yourself!

To learn more about Julien's project, Reforesting San Bruno, visit http://www.4hmilliontrees.org/.

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