Turning Over a New Leaf

4-H’s focus on solving social ills and reaching a new generation is sowing some seeds of discontent

The 4-H program to which Jocelyn Norman belongs is not teaching her how to raise livestock. Nor is she learning how to bake or sew or do any of the other activities that for decades have typified 4-H clubs around the country.

Instead, Ms. Norman, who is 16, is searching for ways to help rid Sandy Level, Va., of a vicious drug problem that has brought violence as well as negative national publicity to her hometown.

Ms. Norman is part of Bridging the Gap of Isolation, a 4-H program that allows kids in poor, mostly rural areas to become involved in solving local problems.

“Being a part of this gives me something to do,” says Ms. Norman. “I’d like to see my community in a better place.”

In an attempt to update its image, take on some of society’s toughest problems, and attract a more diverse array of young people, 4-H has begun to overhaul programs and incorporate more youth in leadership roles.

In Los Angeles, 22 housing projects — not the usual 4-H territory — now have 4-H after-school programs on site, where each day kids can do homework, get involved in violence-prevention activities, or nurture their interest in any number of subjects, from art to business.

Elsewhere, 4-H members are involved in programs like Youth in Action Against HIV/AIDS and Powering Up, which gives poor kids access to computers.

The new projects are part of larger changes that 4-H has made over the last several years to modernize the meaning of the four H’s — head, heart, hands, and health.

The changes — especially those that have attempted to update the classic agrarian 4-H clubs, which have seen membership drop from 2.3 million to 1.4 million in the last two decades — have attracted new individual donors and grant makers but have also ruffled the feathers of some long-time club leaders and volunteers.

Many of the changes originated at the National 4-H Council, a Chevy Chase, Md., group that was formed in 1976 to raise money for 4-H clubs and other 4-H programs across the country. In recent years, the organization has crafted a new role as a designer of innovative 4-H programs and has restructured its own operations to reflect the changes it felt were needed.

The overhaul was necessary, officials say, to update a collection of clubs founded at the turn of the century in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state land-grant universities. Their purpose then was to teach agriculture to children of farmers as a way of helping them develop into productive citizens and of giving them practical skills they could use later in life.

Over the decades, 4-H programs flourished as the youth-development arm of the U.S.D.A.’s Cooperative Extension Service, which provides the public with information on agricultural and environmental issues. They sprouted across rural America and then into suburban areas, often with parents serving as volunteer club leaders.

The more than 76,000 4-H clubs, and thousands of other 4-H programs, operate independently of the National 4-H Council. About 80 per cent of the $500-million they receive annually comes from federal, state, and local governments.

In the traditional clubs, for which 4-H is best known, kids starting at about the age of 9 perform community service, plan social activities, and work on projects focusing on a particular subject — raising beef cattle or mastering Mexican cooking, for example. They keep track of their projects in record books, meticulously detailing their progress over the year. The record books are then used in competitions at the county and state levels.

Proponents of change at 4-H have encouraged local clubs to rely less on competitions to judge performance. They have also tried to encourage more local 4-H staff members to get kids and adults to work together to design and run projects that have a greater impact on their neighborhoods.

Officials hope the changes will keep older kids from dropping out. Currently, less than 9 per cent of the 5.7 million young people active in 4-H are high-school age.

The effort to change 4-H began in the early 1990s, after Richard J. Sauer took over the national council’s presidency and Don Floyd became its vice-president.

Says Mr. Floyd: “Over a period of time, we all realized that we would have to start running things very differently. That meant changing our programs, but it also meant changing our internal culture.”

Among the changes at the National 4-H Council:

* The group divided its staff into teams that develop new programs in several areas — community and youth development, job training, and the environment.

* Young people are now involved in designing the group’s programs and publicity campaigns — including a $2-million campaign under way now to recruit young people and to let the public know that “this is not your grandfather’s 4-H,” as Mr. Sauer puts it. Two youths sit on the council’s 32-person Board of Directors, and the bylaws are being changed to eventually include 10 kids.

* In 1995, in an especially controversial move, the group decided to stop sponsoring the National 4-H Congress, an annual banquet and awards gala honoring competition winners from classic 4-H clubs. The reliance on competitions to select which participants could attend no longer fit the council’s revamped mission, officials say. And, while minority-group members make up 27 per cent of 4-H participants, officials say, that diversity was not reflected in the congress — which mainly included white, rural kids. Although the event is still held, many long-time members say it has suffered without the support of the council.

In 1994, the council even changed the way it raises money, doing away with all but a small fund-raising staff that focuses on annual and planned giving.

The people who design the group’s programs for kids are now also responsible for raising money to support those projects.

“We found that corporations and private foundations would much rather talk to the person who knows what’s going to be done with the dollars than with a development person,” says Mr. Sauer.

Donations from corporations have climbed from $1.3-million in 1993 to $2-million this year, while the amount contributed by foundations has climbed from $40,000 to $2-million.

The changes have won the group praise on several fronts.

“They really are trying to embody these principles about youth development, which is that young people should be involved in their own growth and development,” says Pam Stevens, a program officer at the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund in New York, which has awarded the National 4-H Council $5-million in grants since 1990. “I really think that’s a breath of fresh air coming from such a large organization.”

Andrew Lang, an accountant to non-profit groups who earlier this year conducted a survey on trends and innovations at nearly 100 non-profit organizations, singled out 4-H for its personnel and fund-raising changes.

“They replaced structure with innovation,” says Mr. Lang, president of Lang + Associates in Bethesda, Md.

But not everybody is enthusiastic about the changes, especially within 4-H.

In Cococino County, Ariz., parents and 4-H staff members boycotted some changes made by Jan Norquest, a county 4-H youth educator. She got rid of the requirement that kids participate in countywide competitions and gave young people more of a decision-making role in the organization.

Says Ms. Norquest of the reaction that some 4-H volunteers and staff members have had to the changes: “I would put it in the same terms as burning the American flag. A lot of our folks don’t understand why we need change, period. It makes the whole process very difficult and heart-wrenching.”

Donna Greco, a volunteer in Flagstaff, Ariz., who runs a 4-H club and whose children grew up with 4-H, learning how to cook and make clothing, believes that the organization is turning its back on its most-loyal members.

“The focus has totally gone away from club work as it used to be,” she says. “And that’s a shame because the traditional format worked. I think it really built people.”

Ms. Greco says she was particularly disappointed when the national council pulled its support of the annual congress. The congress, she says, gave children a chance to showcase the projects they had worked on throughout the year and to win deserved recognition for their efforts. “I felt that that was the star in the sky,” she says.

William G. Lowrie, president of Amoco Corporation, was chairman of the Board of Directors at the National 4-H Council when the decision was made to stop supporting the annual congress. Amoco, which had long been a major sponsor of the event, donating $100,000 to $200,000 each year, also ended its support. Mr. Lowrie says he was inundated by mail from 4-H members decrying the withdrawal of support by the council and his company.

“I got thousands of letters from people saying things like, ‘My grandfather went to the congress, my father went to the congress, and I went to the congress, and gosh darn it, my kid is going to go to the congress,’ ” he says.

But, Mr. Lowrie says, Amoco decided that it no longer made sense to support an event that drew mostly white, rural kids and one that had little connection to his company’s own interests.

Amoco now supports the National 4-H Council’s Environmental Stewardship program, which encourages kids to take a role in solving environmental problems. In the last three years, the company has poured close to $600,000 into that program.

And although the annual congress, which is scheduled to take place Thanksgiving weekend in Memphis, has survived, it, too, has been forced to change. States, local clubs, and even 4-H club members themselves now help foot the bill for the scaled-down event, says Susan Stewart, who is coordinating this year’s congress.

Ironically, she says, the congress has undergone some other changes that would probably sit well with the national council.

It is no longer just the grand finale to a year-long competition, she says, but also an opportunity for members to learn about becoming young leaders in five areas — agriculture, the environment, family, technology, and community development.

“We are trying to hit issues that are relevant to young people,” Ms. Stewart says. “Yet we know our organization is tied to agriculture, so we try to keep those two things in the forefront.”

Proponents of modernization within 4-H say that the programs’ original objective — to foster children’s development as individuals and productive citizens — is at the root of many of the changes they are implementing.

“We’re still all about youth development,” says Wendy Wheeler, who runs the community and youth-development department for the National 4-H Council. “But we’re taking a much more inclusive approach.”

For example, she says, Bridging the Gap of Isolation specifically seeks to involve kids who might otherwise have little opportunity — or motivation — to become active where they live. The 10 geographic areas covered by the program, which is being financed by a three-year, $1.5-million grant from DeWitt Wallace, include three small, remote villages on the island of Hawaii, a housing project on a vast Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana, and the rural town of Sandy Level in the tobacco-growing region of Virginia. All of them lack basic amenities for children, but the program hopes to teach kids how to draw from some of the positive aspects of their areas to make change.

In Sandy Level, Ms. Norman and others in the program hope that the negative publicity that has stained the town can eventually be replaced by pride in a community that was founded by emancipated slaves.

“We don’t have much here, but we have some friendly people,” says Ms. Norman. Although she would like to see a recreation center for teenagers and a day-care center where working parents could bring their young children, she says she would be happy to start small — with a bus shelter so that kids won’t have to stand in the rain on their way to school.

At the Muddy Cluster housing project on the American Indian reservation in Montana, the problems range from drug abuse to high unemployment and high-school dropout rates. There are no stores or other businesses, let alone places for kids to go. The housing project is involved in two 4-H programs, Bridging the Gap and Powering Up, and is developing a World-Wide Web site from which it can sell crafts.

Emma Harris, a Rosebud County Extension employee who is directing the program, says she would like to see the reservation become a place where young people see opportunity instead of isolation.

“I hope Bridging the Gap can stir some interest in people to take an active role in realizing they are in charge of their destiny,” she says. “We need to change the way people look at us.”