Well let’s start off this blog with a little info on what the National 4-H Conference actually is! The National 4-H Conference is held at the National 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland each year. Delegates are sent to this conference from all the states in the U.S., as well as from Canada and the U.S. territories. Six youth and two adult delegates from 4-H are selected to represent California 4-H and all our fees are paid. The conference focuses on creating recommendations to help improve the 4-H Program and also is designed to help provide meaningful personal and professional development and experiences for the delegates.
Each year the conference has a theme, and this year’s theme in GREEN AID: Acquire, Inform, Deliver and reflects the question "As society becomes more environmentally conscious, how can the 4-H Youth Development Program aid in enhancing socially significant and relevant programming to increase the environmental awareness of our clubs, our communities, our country, and our world." The goal of the conference is to have the delegates acquire knowledge, inform others, and deliver action in their communities and states.
Here is the link to the site about it for all who are interested in it! http://www.ca4h.org/conference/n4hc/index.asp
And this year the delegates from California are!....
Starting from left, Kelsie, Ryan, Brittany, Jennifer, Carolyn, and Ashlyn!
Now as I pointed out, my name is Jennifer and I am starting off this blog, but we will all be taking turns updating it so eventually you will get to meet us all! So I will tell you all a little bit about myself now. I am 17 years old, and have been in 4-H from eleven years. Some of my main projects are quilting, sewing, citizenship, and leadership, and this year I also am lucky enough to be a State Ambassador! I like to read and swim as well as snowboard.
This is us eating lunch at our first meeting at Dos Coyotes in Davis.
Well enough about me, you will get to meet everyone else soon too : ) So back to the conference, so far we have had two pre-conference meetings. At the first we all just got to know each other and learned some of the obligations that we would have to have for the trip. We also got assigned some homework (everyone loves homework right? I thought so : ) ) which included setting up some meetings with Representatives and Senators from our state for when we are at the conference. We will get to go meet with them all during the conference to tell them about 4-H and ask for their continued support in it (should be really cool!). We also had to meet with our county rep's or directors to have an interview with them to learn all about their jobs in the county and see their views on different aspects of 4-H. Then we got to put together a presetnation about differenet topics just so we can make sure we are all prepared for when we go to the conference. The different topics were:
The Structure of 4-H - Carolyn
The 4-H Name and Emblem - Ashlyn
The Essential Elements of 4-H - Brittany
Statewide Events - Kelsie
The History of 4-H - Ryan
4-H Enrollment Trends - Jennifer
So it really was really interesting and useful stuff, and the presentations were given at our second meeting (held yesterday, Feb. 9th!) and they were pretty informal and really fun : )
This is us at our first meeting trying to figure out where our counties are on a giant puzzle of California at the State 4-H Office. The reason was so we could see the layout of California.
At yesterday's meeting we also worked on some details like flight times and packing lists and stuff. We got to go to lunch at this really cool restaurant, Pluto's, and I don't think many of us had ever been there, so it was fun. Then we came back and started working on talking about how our scheduling with our Representatives was going, and so far the only meeting all planned is with Dana Rohrabacher, but we have a whole bunch of others we are working on getting meetings with. Also we talked about what places we wanted to visit while at the conference, because we have some time to go sightseeing! We are thinking about a bunch of different places right now, though the main things are the National Archives, National Zoo, a White House tour, National Mall, Holocaust Museum, and maybe even a Smithsonian or the National Treasury. Sounds so exciting!Next we worked on figuring out our logo for our shirts (yeah we got to pick our shirt color and design our own logo!) and ended up choosing a Hollywood style star with some other California related designs in it made by Brittany, who is a great artist! We also talked about getting trinkets for the Swap-N-Meet, which is where all the delegates at the conference get together and trade stuff from their states with each other! We decided to buy bottles and fill them with sand from a California beach along with maybe some seashells and possibly a little note. We are even going to plan a field trip to the beach to fill the bottles!
So it was a really great meeting, and it got us all so excited about the trip! As we progress in our planning and even during the trip this blog will be updated by someone different each time. So if you have any questions or comments about the Conference, about us, about 4-H, just leave a post! I look forward to posting again here, and hope you learned a lot from this!
TTFN! ("ta ta for now" for those who didn't watch Winnie the Pooh *smiles*)
~ Jennifer from the National 4-H Conference California Delegation
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