Background

4-H is the nation’s largest youth development organization, empowering nearly six million young people with the skills to lead for a lifetime.  Through the intentional application of 4-H Positive Youth Development (PYD), the program teaches critical life skills and in addition, addresses mental health, education, and employability of youth. 4-H is delivered by the Cooperative Extension System (CES), a community of more than 100 Land-grant Universities across the nation that provides experiences where young people learn by doing.  Kids experience 4-H in every county, parish, borough, and city in the country through a network of 500,000 volunteers and 3,500 4-H professionals.  

Today, in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, America is facing what Dr. Paul Reville, the Francis Keppel Professor of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has called our “Sputnik Moment” – a moment where we as a nation fully recognize that a generation of young people are going to be lost, their talent and contributions unrealized and their future success jeopardized, unless we rally as a country and gain the public and political will that is needed to realize that it is in the best interests of everyone to ensure the health, positive development and education of all young people across the nation.

Closing the Opportunity Gap for Youth

While there is a lot that we do not yet know about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic and financial recession, and the ongoing social unrest, we do know that this unprecedented situation presents a chance to create a multi-sector commitment to address the opportunity gap for youth.  

The opportunity gap describes how the circumstances in which people are born and/or live determine their opportunities in life.  The widening opportunity gap across the nation is affected by four key elements – race, ethnicity, ZIP code, and socio-economic status.  Research also shows that COVID-19 has exacerbated the inequality our young people face in terms of their mental health, their access to education and their employability.  Positive youth development through the 4-H program plays an important role in closing the opportunity gap and mitigates the three key areas that our young people are struggling with – mental health, education, and employability.  

How is the Cooperative Extension System responding?

This vision for 4-H PYD contains the elements of diversity, equity and inclusion, caring adult relationships, and a goal to serve at minimum 1 in 5 youth.  To accomplish this vision, the ECOP 4-H Leadership Committee has implemented several national initiatives through Cooperative Extension including 4-H at Home; the 4-H Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Design Team; the 4-H Pathways Leadership Institute, and the Opportunity4All brand campaign.

4-H programs are inherently local, meeting youth and families where they live and serving community needs and values. Youth choose and complete hands-on projects in areas like science, health, agriculture, and civic engagement in a positive environment, where they receive guidance from adult mentors and are encouraged to take on proactive leadership roles.  Regardless of the project area, all 4-H programs include mentoring and career readiness as core elements.

What difference is Cooperative Extension making?

The 4-H model of positive youth development has driven new thinking and approaches to youth development around the world for decades.  Preeminent youth development scholars at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University partnered with faculty at America’s land-grant universities to conduct research, which showed that the structured out-of-school learning, leadership experiences, and adult mentoring that young people receive through their participation in 4-H play a vital role in helping them achieve success.  Cooperative Extension continues to look closely at the ways in which 4-H contributes to the high-quality positive development of youth and develops research-based professional development opportunities for all youth development professionals and volunteers. 

What can be done with additional resources and partnerships?

Additional fiscal resources are needed by Cooperative Extension to assure sufficient, prepared, and supported PYD staff in rural, urban, and suburban settings that support the 4-H program at the local, state, and national levels. Immediate staffing and support are needed for the above programs initiated by the ECOP 4-H Leadership Committee and Cooperative Extension. New national staffing and program support at all levels is essential to galvanize, coordinate and provide focused leadership for our efforts to close the opportunity gap and mitigate the employability, education, and mental health challenges that youth currently face.

By investing additional resources in Cooperative Extension’s capacity to create change and reach new youth with its proven PYD approach, we can upend America’s persistent social, economic and political imbalances.  Our intentional approach will bring together communities, organizations, government, educators and young people to promote positive outcomes for youth, thereby eliminating the opportunity gap and creating a more equitable and just society.