Ashley: Hello, everyone! Welcome to the 2024-2025 4-H Volunteer Update for Snohomish County. Thank you so much for joining us.
We want to start by appreciating all of you! A quiz question at the Extension booth at Fair asks, “Who runs the 4-H program?” It’s YOU! All of you!! 4-H exists because of caring adult volunteers, so on behalf of our entire community, we thank you.
Ashley: I am Ashley Hall, I am your 4-H faculty in Snohomish County. I use she/her pronouns, and I am happy to be here.
Beth: Hi, I’m Beth Wangen (she/her), your 4-H volunteer coordinator.
Kim: Hi, I am Kim Baker, your 4-H Program coordinator.
Beth: And not with us today, but certainly an amazing part of our 4-H team, is Helen Epstein, our 4-H secretary.
Ashley: In this year’s Volunteer Update, we’ll have Announcements, Great ideas from veteran clubs, Policy Updates, and Reflection. We are going to keep this short, because there is a new training this year required by WSU Risk Management for all faculty, staff, and volunteers who work with youth. More about that later.
Beth: So, first off, I’d like to share with you a really helpful practice some of our clubs have implemented. If you have a club e-mail account, consider designating a particular day or days each week when it will be checked. Then, set an out-of-office reply on the account that says, for example, “This account is checked regularly on Fridays,” (or whenever it’s checked) and continue with, “If you have an urgent matter, contact the 4-H office at snoco.4h@wsu.edu .” This helps to manage expectations, which is key to serving our families. By the way, if your club does not already have a club e-mail account, strongly consider creating one.
Ashley: We have several workshops planned for this upcoming 4-H year. One series I want to highlight is our conflict management series. This is going to include three separate training courses. The first, similar to what many of you have already taken, but with re-vamped examples, will be Conflict Management from a Theoretical Perspective” (don’t worry, it isn’t scary). The second will be “Conflict Management Skills: Practice with Adults.” And the third will be “Conflict Management Skills: Teaching Youth to Engage.” The second and third workshops will be added to give you all practice actually engaging with others pre-conflict, at the onset of conflict, and when conflict has been left to fester. The third is especially important, as it will teach volunteers how to teach youth to engage with their peers, or even adults, and how to support them as they work to resolve their own interpersonal conflicts. While I love Zoom, and we will offer some hybrid and virtual training if they are needed, all of the trainers feel that this series should be in-person. We will offer snacks and/or meals and plenty of discussion time. So come ready to learn, commiserate, and have fun in fellowship with your fellow volunteers. Dates are To Be Determined, as we work hard to finalize these training courses for you all.
Along that same topic area, we will be developing a new training to discuss bullying, specifically. This will incorporate information from the new policy training that I will talk about at the end of this presentation, and will, hopefully, help you all to identify and intervene when you suspect bullying.
We are always open to creating or finding additional workshops and training courses for each of you, so please let us know what types of training you feel would help you in your roles.
Beth: Next, I want to remind you all of the importance of Identifying the Enrolled Volunteers for your Club. It is absolutely vital that everyone in your club knows which adults are certified and CURRENTLY enrolled volunteers, at any point in time. These are the folks who have met all WSU criteria to serve as 4-H volunteers, including screening and ongoing background checks. All volunteers whose enrollments are up to date, meaning their status is “Approved,” should wear their name badges at 4-H activities. New volunteers get their name badges at Fair. Those whose enrollment is not up-to-date should NOT be wearing an official volunteer name badge. Club leaders can see who is currently enrolled on their club rosters from 4-H Online, and this year we are piloting a new tool to help everyone know who the approved volunteers are. Kim is going to tell you all about it.
Kim: Thank you, Beth. To help our members and our families not only know who the certified, enrolled volunteers in their club are, but also who runs the county level activities for the projects they are involved with or interested in, and who to contact if there are questions or concerns, we came up with this 4-H resource sheet. We’ve made one for each club and filled in all the information specific to that club – and we’ll be emailing it to each family enrolled in the club so they have it for reference. We tried to make it visually appealing, so that it has a better chance of making it to your bulletin board or fridge.
You can see on here that in addition to the main club leader and the club contact information toward the top, we have also included information on program leaders, our 4-H staff, 4-H resources, and information on how to connect with the office of compliance and civil rights. On the back of the sheet, all the certified enrolled volunteers in the club will be listed, along with the project areas they represent. And finally, also on the back we will include a list of program leaders and their contact information as well. So now families have a visualization of the resources available to them – and it may even introduce folks to resources they were not aware of.
Of course, to have an accurate list of certified enrolled volunteers, our volunteers must enroll in 4-H Online each year – so, to allow a little bit of time for volunteers to complete that process, we aim to send this resource out by October 31. And we’ll send them again just after the fair enrollment deadline of March 31.
Finally, as we are adding new volunteers quite frequently, we will update individual club resource lists and re-send them when appropriate. Club leaders may request an updated list at any time. We hope this becomes a helpful resource for you!
Ashley: Thank you so much for that Kim! I want to jump in and remind folks that enrollment opened October 1 – YAY! Remember to ensure all youth and volunteers are enrolled prior to starting 4-H activities. In addition, we are moving forward with our late fee that we attempted to implement last year. Returning 4-H members will need to enroll before February 1st, to avoid the late fee. Any returning youth member who enrolls on or after February 1st will see their enrollment increase by $15 for a total enrollment of $45. This is not applicable for new 4-H youth.
Beth: Our website will be getting an upgrade in the coming months, so you can expect things to look a little different in 2025. With this upgrade, we will be better able to comply with regulations around accessibility of our pages and documents. The CloverGram will also be shifting to a webpage format, so please let us know if you have any trouble finding things once all these changes start happening.
Ashley: And now we are to the reason we are keeping this volunteer update short and sweet. We have a new required training that has come straight from WSU Risk Management. It is referred to as EP-14, or Executive Policy 14: Protection and Safety of Minors.
We are excited to offer this to you, and feel that it has some really valuable information. However, we want to preface this requirement with a few notices: First, this training was written with the main goal of guiding program managers for campus-based events involving youth. Obviously, we don’t provide campus-based events, as Pullman is a bit far away, but the information is still very useful, and the training is mandatory. Just go in with the benefit of the doubt and a notepad to take notes with questions. Second, while most of the information aligns with existing 4-H policies, there are some instances where the training may be slightly different. Any time there is a discrepancy, which we as a state team are working to clean up, EP-14 is the primary policy and needs to be followed. However, there may be times that our 4-H program is more restrictive than EP-14. We will help you through those rare instances. Third, we want you all to take this training very seriously. There isn’t a lot that will shock you or that is particularly new to you volunteers who have already taken our required trainings, but we want you to pay close attention, take notes, and come back to us with questions. IF we receive a few questions, we may just process those on an individual basis. However, if many of you come with similar questions, we will develop a FAQ’s document and/or host some live discussion about this new policy.
We do have a few topics we want to draw your attention to before you embark on your training journey!
- First, this training touches on topics that are hard to read/hear. It touches on abuse, neglect, bullying, and hazing. Take your time, take breaks, and give yourself grace if the content is hard to process. Please reach out to one of us to talk about it if you have a strong reaction or just need a friendly ear. We are here for you.
- Private communication. We have always said that private communication with youth is a no-no, but this policy outlines that in more detail. We should not be sharing our personal phone or email with youth. I recognize that texting is a very effective method of communication, but the private nature of texting can put you and our youth at risk. I am going to recommend that volunteers do not share their personal phone numbers with youth in the course of their volunteering duties. That will make for more challenging communication, but it is the safest course of action. Instead, please communicate as a group whenever possible, through a shared server like Discord or a group chat, and communicate with youth through their parent/guardian. I have had to support the youth I work with to utilize email communication more often, and am very honest with them about limitations associated with my job. I am fortunate to have a university-owned cell phone, but even that I try to limit use of when I am talking with minors and I always include a second adult in any communication. I recognize that this is a challenge, and we are happy to process this with you, if you worry about it being a severe burden. Getting started with that expectation with families early will be key for you all. If you have already given your phone number out, I might suggest discussing this policy honestly with your club at the beginning of the year and brainstorming the most effective method of communication.
- Private email. EP-14 says that we are not to communicate with youth using private e-mail accounts. I am going to be honest, I am not 100% how this applies when talking about volunteers, but I interpret it for myself to mean I shouldn’t use non-WSU email when communicating with youth and volunteers. That is easy for me. For all of you, it will be more challenging. However, I do think it is a prudent move for ALL volunteers to create a separate email account for their 4-H communications. That way you will be able to easily separate your volunteer world from your private world. I live in a small community, and as such, I often have relationships with volunteers that are both personal and professional. I am very open with those volunteers and let them know that communication of a personal nature should not occur via professional means (like when we are out to eat or when they are calling/texting on my personal phone), and that communication of a professional nature needs to be initiated through my WSU phone number and/or email. This is even the case with my spouse! It may feel a little strange at first, but it is way to protect you, your personal time, and others that we interact with, from confusing our roles.
- There are many cases where the training asks you to report to your supervisor – for you all, that is myself, Kim, or Beth. You can email all three of us, or just one of us, but all three is better for an urgent matter as we are rarely off at the same time. If you are not sure whom to email, here is a good guide: For volunteer issues/questions, Beth is best bet as the Volunteer Development Coordinator. For club, program, or 4-H activities, Kim is our Program Coordinator, so she is best. CC’ing me is okay, but I am going to have Kim or Beth take the lead on most issues and keep me informed. If you are struggling with Kim or Beth, I am your go-to first. We all try hard to have boundaries around our personal time, so you won’t necessarily get an instantaneous response.
- The training refers to reporting accidents – as a quick reminder, you can do that with the WSU Incident Report Form found under the Club Resources heading on our Resources page. There may be forms links in the training, but volunteers in 4-H will continue to use the forms we provide on our resources page. In addition, pay special attention to the section of the training that talks about accommodating participants’ unique needs. If you have a volunteer or club member who needs to request a reasonable accommodation, our request form can be found on that same website under For Members and is titled Request for Reasonable Accommodation.
- Finally, I want to thank you for your diligence and thank you for doing this training. It is required, so it must be completed this year. At least one volunteer for every ten youth present must have completed the training when we start the year. Please take the time to get it done as soon as you are able, and let us know if you have any questions. Depending on when you are viewing this, you either will get or have already received an email with a link to the training, and you can find the link to the training instructions below this video. Let us know if you have any questions at all. You can always find the instructions on our Volunteer Education webpage. wsu.edu/snohomish/volunteer-education
Kim: Thanks, Ashley! As we close, many of us are reflecting on the successes and challenges of last year and are excited to start a new 4-H season. I can’t help but think there must be something about 4-H that drives us to push through, doing whatever we need to do to make sure 4-H happens for our kids. I know that you all do this. Because it’s important to you, it’s important to our members and to our community. So I wanted to take a moment in closing to talk about that. I’m pretty sure if we were all together in a room and had the opportunity to share what makes 4-H, 4-H – we would hear some very common themes, and I further believe those themes deeply resonate with each of us. To share just one that recurs often enough that I believe we all share it: and that is the thrill of witnessing youth develop confidence, skills, and independence – I believe that it doesn’t really even matter how long we’ve been involved in 4-H – or in what capacity, the things we appreciate and love about 4-H create the culture we all enjoy. In fact, I think we might tend to agree that if we get members to stick around for any length of time, the aforementioned transformation is pretty much guaranteed. It’s why we do what we do. And yet, despite this commonality of spirit, the most common complaints about 4-H surround interpersonal relationships. That’s actually not too surprising. We are a people organization, and we all have very different personalities and perspectives. But I call this to our attention today because the ultimate success of 4-H belongs to each of us and how we interact with our youth and with each other. Recognizing that at its core, the 4-H we want is the 4-H all of us want, I wonder if I can ask you to take a few minutes next time you’re alone in the car or washing dishes for self-reflection and consider two questions: 1) What are you actively doing to promote the kind of 4-H experience that we all value? And 2) Are you doing anything that hampers it?
We want to close this presentation by thanking you for all that you do – and by sharing a clip from our friend Ted Lasso that illustrates a little piece of wisdom Ashley introduced to us, and that she has consistently modeled and encouraged in all the interactions we have as 4-H staff. It’s made a difference for us and we hope you enjoy it – but more than that, we hope it encourages you to be curious.
Ted: Hmmm…Mae, what do I need to win?
Mae: Two triple-twenties and a bullseye.
Rupert: (laughs) Good luck.
Ted: You know, Rupert, guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years I never understood why; it used to really bother me. Then one day, I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw this quote by Walk Whitman, and it was painted on the wall there. It said, “Be curious, not judgmental.” I like that. (throws a dart, crowd cheers briefly in amazement)
So I get back in my car, and I’m driving to work, and all of a sudden it hits me. All them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out. So they judged everything, and they judged everyone.
And I realized that their underestimating me…Who I was had nothing to do with it.
‘Cause if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions. You know? Questions like, “Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?” (throws another dart, crowd gets more excited)
To which I would’ve answered, “Yes, sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father, from age ten ‘til I was 16, when he passed away.
(Focuses on dart board) …Barbecue sauce. (Throws dart, hits bullseye. Crowd goes wild.)
Good game, Rupert.
Beth: Thank you, Ted! Well, that concludes the 2024-25 Volunteer Update. Thank you for your time. …. Be sure to give yourself credit for completing this update at the Qualtrics link below the video, on our Volunteer Update page.