The meeting ends and the county educators return to their cars. And plug in their phones to begin to make calls.
Blow Back
A week later the ExtensionDirector’s phone lights up l ike a Christmas treewithcounty agents seeking direction. Does this meanwe don’t control 4 -H anymore? What happens to our budgets? Will the 4-H money come to us or not? And what the heck is a Regional Coordinator? The Director organizes a ZOOMcall and takes and answers all questions. Reassuredabout budgets, the Extension agents say, if the budget is intact, quite frankly that is one less thing for us to worry about. Let those new Regional Coordinators and the 4-H Director worry about it.
But it is not over.
County commissioners call the chancellors of the local LGU campuses, demanding to know exactlywhat Extensionand 4-H are doing. Most of the chancellors are not even sure what 4-H is on their campuses, and thought it was a youth club somehow linked to farms. Wait, one says to the irate commissioner, Future Farmers of America is not even part of my campus. What are you talking about? Commissioners pick up the phone to the state legislature. Wheels grind slowly in the capitol, but they do grind. And they have been known to grind all manner of people beneath them. Meanwhile, over the period of a month, Regional Coordinators have met withcounty educators and volunteers. The road has been rocky, and meetings have been impassioned. The idea that there will be central programming standards seems tobe the key sticking point, along with all the demands for diversity, which, unfortunately in terms of timing, has coincided with a newspaper investigative report on the use of migrant labor by several of the large agribusinesses buying local farms. The idea that 4-H clubs need to get into the middle of that controversy is a constant sticking point in the regional meetings, and in virtually all meetings withvolunteers. An average of two volunteers have resigned in half the counties, but the remainder seemstable. At their weekly meeting with the Director, the Regional Coordinators seem cautiouslyoptimistic that all will be well. Of course, one says, we are going to have to be flexible here. You know, Bev, people are actually working really, really hard out there. And they are absolutely sure of their product, absolutely sure that 4-Hers, even the ones who only are in school programs, are the best of the lot, and will be the cement of future civil society. So, we need to respect that. Theybelieve, and so do we, Bev, that we do make a big difference to youth outcomes even now. Six weeks in, with that observationechoing in her thoughts, Bev visits the Chair of the Sociology Department, Dr. KimChung. What I want, she says, is a real evaluation of 4-H, a real understanding of exactlywhat we are accomplishing here and for whom. And a real understanding of the quality of our volunteers – do we really have the right people to mentor our youth? And will that work as we diversify? Is 4-H really doing what we say we are doing? I have a grant application into the Community Foundation for a study. I am assured it will be approved. Canwe get this done in sixmonths?
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