Leadership Starts Here

Published: 2020
By Jaycee Searer

The Dawson County 4-H Program has five organized clubs with over 70 youth members and 32 volunteer leaders. Some of the most popular projects in Dawson County are photography, arts and crafts, and large and small animals. We have also focused on growing our Cloverbud Program and have introduced a new “Building with Legos” project for our enrolled members. The Dawson County 4-H organization had a busy 2019-2020 year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic and has big plans for the next 4-H year. 4-H members and leaders were responsible for planning their own county fair event. Despite challenges from COVID-19 restrictions, our members, leaders, and the staff in our office came together and worked diligently with our local board of health, fair board, and county commissioners to create a safe fair plan that would allow us to continue our event and the fair. The community was visited by 4-H’ers during National 4-H Week: from collecting canned goods for the food bank, to delivering over 3,000 clover cookies to Dawson County businesses, the 4-H’ers of Dawson County participated in many community service projects. We continue to take pride in our community efforts and joined forces with our local GATE Trade Show Committee to help organize and plan the annual trade show. We also hosted our own booth and were featured as guest speakers during one of the breakout sessions. The goal of the 4-H youth program is to develop citizenship, leadership, responsibility and life skills for youth, through learning programs, and our local 4-H youth have done just that by getting involved in many outreach programs in the county. The 4-H program in Dawson County continues to grow enrollment, grow in our project numbers, and grow our leadership base.