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

Over the course of the year, youth not only learned the skills with their 4-H projects but also improved personal communication skills, problem-solving, working in a team, and critical thinking skills. The year-long path paid off for the youth.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit there were major ramifications for Extension 4-H programming with many events postponed or canceled due to the restrictions related to social distancing including the traditional livestock and country project auctions. The County Youth Investment Committee and Extension Agent decided to have a 2020 program but to do it virtually. 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 2020 program had 8 livestock and 30 country ham youth involved who sold their market animals and country hams for a total amount of $25,125. The unique feature that the program allowed for individuals to “add-on donations” to the youth without actually purchasing the project. The “add-on donations” was then added to the total bid amount by the buyer on their project, youth received all the money. This allowed for individuals to support youth on much smaller financial commitment.