Igniting Youth's Sparks

A fresh start for a pre-existing program. This year the 4-H Youth Development team chose to hold back from doing their annual Ignite Conference during the small farms week and chose to do it on it's very own day. This year the program was held on April 21^st2023 with new ideas set in motion. The conference drew in 100 middle school youth participants, 40 volunteers, 10 chaperones, and 10 extension staff members. During the conference, the participants got the opportunity to participate in 3 of the 6 available workshops of their choosing. One of the workshops offered was a workshop based on S.T.E.M., which was led by six of the S.T.E.M. department college students and their professor. This workshop exposed the participants to a crime scene investigation activity, where they received a briefing on a crime that happened, and they had to figure out who was the perpetrator of the crime by using S.T.E.M. techniques given to them from the college students. From the start this workshop drew in a large number of attendees. Overall, the workshop had 50 middle school youth participants that choose to learn about what was going to take place. At the end of the workshop, there was a post-workshop survey given to each student, and the results included: 81% of the workshop participants agreed that the workshop leader was very knowledgeable about the subject matter; 34% and 62.5% of the workshop participants stated that the workshop was either organized or extremely organized respectively; 72% of the participants agreed that they wanted to learn more about S.T.E.M.; and 94% of the workshop participants agreed that this workshop should be included in future 4-H Ignite Conferences. This workshop was a major success, and the 4-H team will consider keeping this workshop within the 4-H Ignite Conference rotation.