4-H Coordinator Clallam County
Melanie’s role as Clallam County 4-H Coordinator puts to work her love for “dreaming big” and “establishing systems to make things real.” She loves the variability of tasks as coordinator and is ever seeking ways to support youth development in our county. Although supporting the Clallam County Fair is a monumental annual task for 4-H and takes all year to plan, she insists “you never know what you are going to do in a day with 4-H.”
“Building the 4-H community is very motivating for me,” Melanie shares. Although her role mainly is support for the volunteer leaders and not actually leading the groups, she enjoys sitting in on meetings and figuring out the best ways to support what they are accomplishing. WSU’s tremendous resource base feeds these 4-H programs and her support contributes to the clubs logistics running smoothly.
4-H was originally created by the University as a program to organize extension agents to deliver science-based information to the public. The focal points of these programs have long been mastering skills in homesteading, raising animals and home gardening. Melanie explains to me that although those skills are still ubiquitous in 4-H, more recently leadership, citizenship and equity, are at the forefront of 4-H’s mission.
With a background that includes a Masters Degree in ‘Environment & Community’ from Antioch University Seattle, she points out that “you can’t create a better environment without creating a better community.” Melanie’s passion is finding ways to bolster how 4-H can best contribute to the positive efforts of our community.
On the table right now for 4-H is a ground-breaking project called Youth Participatory Action Research, Y-PAR. Three counties in Washington are implementing this program. The project is for teens to conduct a needs assessments, and do research in their communities on an issue that their community is facing. In our case, that is the opioid epidemic. This will culminate in a youth led health promotion project. This project is in collaboration with Upward Bound at Peninsula College.
Thank you Melanie for all your great work!
To learn more about Clallam County 4-H, please contact her at melanie.greer@wsu.edu