The Grant Park 4-H chapter isn’t new, but it’s been growing, and leaders Angie Helwich, Samantha Sexton, and Megan Walsh have been working together to help show all their chapter offers to the community.
The trio recently took over the chapter as the previous leadership’s children had aged out of the club, and the club needed someone to step up. Together, they want to engage the community and help grow the club.
Recently, under Helwich, Sexton, and Walsh’s direction, the club conducted a window decorating project, where 4-H members created posters about 4-H that were displayed in local businesses, including Sharper Homes, Traxx, and Wick’s Bicycle Shop.
“One of the activities we knew was around but we didn’t do before was the window decorating contest. As the new leaders, we wanted to get our name out there, dispel some myths about what 4-H is, who’s eligible — I think people assume it’s only for farm kids and you have to show livestock,” Helwich said.
The 100-year old national organization has roots in agriculture, but currently offers a lot more in addition to its agricultural offerings. The club chooses projects to complete to promote hands-on learning, and it gives them the chance to polish skills, such as public speaking, meeting new people, and trying something new.
“That’s another thing we’re trying to do is to get the kids to share what they’re doing — get up and talk — to get the kids, to tell what they learned, what they’d do differently,” Helwich said, noting that not only would these skills help kids if they ended up showing their project, whether livestock or a quilting project, and they wouldn’t be so intimidated. The skills certainly would be beneficial as they enter adulthood, as well.
There are scholarship opportunities, as well as leadership development opportunities, where kids can even go to Washington, D.C., and take part in leadership conferences.
Helwich explained although they meet monthly, members of the 4-H club are not required to attend every meeting or participate in every project. Joining 4-H is free, though there may be nominal fees associated with projects, such as an entry fee in a show or the cost of materials to complete a project.
The four Hs in 4-H club stand for head, heart, hand, and health, which relate to the club’s values: head for clearer thinking, heart to loyalty, hands to service, and health to better living.
“There’s a whole curriculum between cooking, STEM, geography, sportsmanship — you can do projects on pretty much anything. It’s a great way to have kids do what they like to do, what they’re good at, try something out, and they may decide they don’t want to do that, so when they get to be high school or college age, they might not enter adulthood having no idea what they want to do,” Helwich said.
The 4-H club is geared toward kids ages eight-to-18, but youngsters ages five-to-eight can join the Cloverbuds, which has fewer demands and doesn’t show projects in front of judges, though they may get experience talking to them depending on the projects they choose. September 1 is the cut-off date for ages.
“I think, for me, it’s the fact there’s so much to choose from, and you can either take one project and just repeat it year after year, or you can just pick and choose. My oldest did woodworking for a couple of years, then switched to aerospace for the past two years,” Helwich said of what she enjoyed most about the organization.
“On our own, without 4-H, we wouldn’t necessarily have gone down that trail of exploration into these different projects, but this has allowed us to do so,” Helwich continued.
In Grant Park, the 4-H club meets monthly at St. Peters Church, on Monday evenings, at 6:30 p.m. Leaders Helwich, Sexton, and Walsh took over in the past few years and aim to encourage more people to get involved.
For those interested in joining the Grant Park 4-H chapter, they can contact Angie Helwich at angie.helwich@gmail.com,and she will walk those interested through the process, or they can contact 4-H directly by visiting https://extension.illinois.edu/gkw/4-h-kankakee-county.
Stephanie Irvine is a freelance reporter.