At the beginning of the 2017-2018 4-H Program year, the Owen County 4-H Council shared concern for the teen opportunities and involvement. With this concern, it was important to boost the teen club for the teens of Owen County. According to research by N.J. Pearce and R.W. Larson, young people obtain many developmental benefits from involvement in organized youth programs which include social skills, teamwork, and initiative. It was decided that a new look for a teen club would be good to provide opportunities for the teen 4-H youth. Instead of using the name 4-H Teen Club, the name was changed to 4-H Teen Council to give a different perspective in hopes of bringing more attention and interest to the club.

After putting a flyer out in the Maurice Bowling Middle School and the Owen County High School for the first meeting, we had a turnout of thirteen youth that attended and were interested. At the first meeting, we used large wall posters to write down ideas for rules, community service projects, group outings, and business meeting topics. Each member was given a marker to write down their ideas and were told to move on to each poster to share their thoughts even if more than one for each poster. After doing so, each member was then given eight stickers that was used to vote for their favorite ideas. By doing this initial activity and giving them a sense of ownership not only as an individual but also as a group made a big difference.

4-H Teen Council met at least once a month throughout the school year, unless a community service project, group outing, or other activity needed to meet otherwise. On the regular, ten of the thirteen original members attended the meetings. This year the 4-H Teen Council outing was held in May right before school ended. The group decided, planned, and presented the plan to the 4-H Council, which decided to fund their trip. It was a successful event and the teens that were able to attend had a great day at Malibu Jack’s in Lexington, KY for the day. 

After planning this trip, the teens were informed of 4-H Teen Conference in June. Many were interested, however, four were able to commit to attending. The others were unable to attend for reasons such as family trips, other camps, etc. According to Rachel Noble, the focus of 4-H Teen Conference is to foster development in leadership and teamwork skills, improve communication skills, become involved in civic life, as well as to expand knowledge related to one of the 4-H core content areas. These content areas include communication/citizenship, health, natural resources, agriculture, expressive arts, family consumer sciences, and science, engineering, and technology.

As a result of this conference, all four of the teens representing Owen County 4-H are planning to attend college after high school and two are interested in the University of Kentucky. After evaluation, all four youth felt that they enjoyed the opportunity to experience college as well as their community service project. All four youth participants felt that their greatest benefit from this leadership conference was having fun and making new friendships. By building friendships they are gaining the ability to network and enhancing their leadership skills.