Leadership is one of the core areas for the Kentucky 4-H program. Leadership activities help youth: develop confidence in their leadership potential and their own sense of identity; improve their self-esteem; enhance their communication skills in sharing, reflecting and discussion; understand the importance of diversity and improves their ability to relate to others; learn effective decision making methods and experience problem-solving situations; and learn group social skills. The Grayson County 4-H Youth Development Agent strives to actively engage teens in the process of planning, preparing and implementing day camps and workshops.

During Spring Break, three day camps were scheduled and planned for youth in the community; a Cloverbud Mini-Day Camp, a SET Day Camp, and a Creative Writing Workshop. All of which were primarily teen led and implemented. Promotion for the activities was provided by the Extension Service through fliers in newsletters, news articles, email list serves, and radio promotion. Space for each event did have a limitation and parents were required to call in advance to sign their child up; this provided a head count for supplies and meals for the youth. No registration fees were required for any of the events as supplies were either already on hand at the Extension Office or purchased with 4-H program funds, as well as meals and snacks needed for the days.

The Cloverbud Mini-Day Camp focused on Home Environment and was primarily led by the teens that participated in the 2019 class of Advanced Teen Leadership Academy. A requirement of the ATLA program was to lead a workshop or day camp focusing on one of the core areas (drawn at random at the first meeting) for 4-H, the Grayson County group drew Family & Consumer Science core. On the day of, the three teens split into three stations; thank you card making, no-sew pillows, and zucchini fries with basic knife skills lesson. This mini-day camp lasted 3 hours, 17 youth participate and 7 teens assist in addition to the three leading the event. The participants worked on making thank you cards to give someone and talked about gratitude, they made no-sew pillows, and feedback from some parents post-event said their children loved the zucchini fries and have made them at home while utilizing the knife skills they learned.

The SET Day Camp focused on Robotics & Coding and Torey Earle, Extension Specialist for SET was the primary instructor for the day. In addition to Torey, there were two members from the 4-H SET Board in attendance to assist youth with the activities for the day, one of which is from Grayson County. The activities for the day went through algorithms, computational thinking and coding; ending the day with the participants inputting code into Sphero robots programming them to work through various mazes. Twenty-two youth were in attendance for the day camp; based on the survey at the end of the program, all 22 agreed they learned new things about computer science, and 19 said they could talk about how computer science can be used to solve everyday problems.

The Creative Writing workshop was a project that the Grayson County youth in the 2019 class of Teen Leadership Academy had to complete as part of the program. The members of TLA were tasked with completing a county project, and the three youth for this group have a passion for creative writing and decided on that topic to fulfill their project. This topic falls into the Communications and Expressive Arts core area. The three teens planned out the agenda for the day which included ice breakers and games for breaks, brainstorming, rough drafts, and final drafts with presenting. While the participants did not complete full stories, they increased their knowledge for the creative writing process and had the starts for new stories by the time they left for the day. There were six youth participants for the event.

By giving the teens the reigns for these programs, they have increased confidence in their leadership skills and potential, increased self-esteem, enhanced their communication skills, improved their ability to relate to others, increased effective decision making methods and problem-solving skills and enhanced group social skills. Ultimately the teens were the teachers for these programs with the agent assisting them as needed, truly “Making the Best, Better” and “Learning by Doing”!