Teaching youth entrepreneurial skills is not taught in the traditional school classroom today. To equip our youth, we offered them the opportunity to sell their 4-H market livestock and country hams at Mercer County Investment in Youth Sale. The program's objectives are to learn how to engage in a contract and understand that they had requirements to participate in the sale. An integral part of the program is youth are creating a networking system. The participants are required to learn marketing techniques and identify potential buyers. In addition, participants learned how to network and market themselves by approaching potential buyers and the language they should use when promoting their project. In the long term, we have equipped students with the mindset that they can be successful and more engaged and take ownership of their success. In addition, the program provided a mechanism to promote agriculture and cooperative extension and its programs to individuals outside our traditional extension clientele.

Over the year, youth not only learned the skills with their 4-H projects but also improved personal communication skills, problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking skills. The year-long path paid off for the youth. The 2022 program had eight livestock participants and 26 country ham youth involved who sold their market animals and country hams for $49,658. 

We did utilize the FairEntry Online Entry Program has an online auction option. This program allowed buyers to view the biographical information about the youth and see photos and videos related to their projects. The program's unique feature allowed individuals to "add on donations" to the youth without actually purchasing the project due to holding a live auction. The "add-on donations" was then added to the total bid amount by the buyer on their project; the youth received all the money. Add on option allowing individuals to support youth with a much smaller financial commitment.