The 4-H Organization is founded with the purpose of helping youth develop the four H’s of 4-H: Head, Heart, Hands and Health.  Throughout a 4-H member’s experience, members develop each of these four foundational H’s through club, project and service activities in their county 4-H program.  Allen County 4-H’er, Kierra Owens, has taken those four elements and applied each to her senior 4-H service project called, The Storybook Trial.  

Over the course of two years, Kierra Owens has developed her plan for a Community Storybook Trail which she has implemented as part of her senior 4-H project at the Dugas Park in Allen County.  Kierra made use of public hiking trails in her community, by enhancing the walking paths with kid-friendly podiums that highlight children’s book story pages.   Not only does Kierra’s project increase public traffic through these hiking trails, but she also encourages youth reading literacy, youth physical fitness, family bonding and healthy eating habits.   

At each podium, families stop to read another part of the progressing children’s book story, pick up NEP healthy eating recipes and receive instructions for activities to get ones heart rate up such as skipping, jumping jacks, etc.  In order to encourage frequent visitation of the trail, Kierra updates the podiums with new children’s books each month, checks on the podiums and restocks recipe cards.  Kierra hopes that other Allen County 4-H’er or 4-H clubs will adopt her project each year to maintain this service to the community.  

The development of this project required senior 4-H’er, Kierra Owens, to apply her leadership and organization skills to develop a plan, meet with community leaders, public speaking and presentation skills, labor to build and install podiums, fundraising efforts and arranging volunteers.  Kierra hosted an outdoor community reveal event on September 19^th for her Storybook Trail with a host of various community businesses and organizations to mark the grand opening of the Community Storybook Trial.