4-H Teen Institute makes strides

In the 4-H Teen Institute, local teens do community service projects, learn leadership skills and build self character. In the past two months, the Teen Institute has done a number of community service projects. In October we attended the Carson River Snapshot Day. At the Snapshot Day, we tested the water to determine the water quality, did a trash pick-up and got very, very wet. We partnered with Duane Petite from The Nature Conservancy who helped us understand the environmental issues that threaten the Carson River. Erin Costa of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension helped us test water quality and the general health of the river. We had a great time that day.

In early November, we organized the entire 4-H Awards Night (where 4-H members get their year-end awards). We wrote an event program and script, got donations from local nurseries and florists to the Pau-Wa-Lu cafeteria, organized a candle-lighting ceremony and made a 200-slide PowerPoint presentation of the year's events and held a flag ceremony. We had about 250 members, parents, leaders and supporters in attendance. The best part was watching the slide show at the end.

On Nov. 13, we had our first 4-H Community Club meeting and again, the Teen Institute organized the whole thing. Community Club is a monthly gathering of all our 4-H clubs and we get to do demonstrations on our projects, community service projects and have fun with our friends. Our community service project was Operation Postcard, where each person wrote one or more holiday postcards to the U.S. troops overseas and we also had a holiday food drive.

There are some really cool Teen Institute events coming up that we're working on: Holiday food basket/food drive, walk/run marathon for charity, a leaf/snow yard clean-up day for seniors, a book drive with the women's 20-30 club benefiting children in Third World countries, a blanket drive for the women's shelter and supply boxes for the troops.

In January we are going snow-shoeing in Hope Valley. A field naturalist will be coming from the Great Basin Outdoor School to lead us on our excursion. We love 4-H Teen Institute. For information contact 4-H at 782-9960. You do not need to be a prior 4-H member to join Teen Institute. 4-H is a youth development program of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.