October 15, 2019
Announcement: State 4-H Coordinated CWF Experience Postponed Until Summer 2021
Kansas 4-H Youth Development will not be coordinating a statewide Citizenship Washington Focus (CWF) experience for the Summer of 2020 but will rather redirect resources to assess how local units utilize this educational opportunity, build a more intentional planning, promotion, and recruitment toolkit for agents, and connect youth skills learned during CWF into other statewide civic engagement and leadership activities.
Recent history indicates that there were challenges in reaching bus capacity in 2017 and the trip was cancelled in 2018. While I am thankful for the youth delegates from the 26 local units who participated in either 2017 or 2019 in the statewide coordinated CWF experience, only 5 local units sent more than two delegates. I believe this should be a reason to pause and initiate a larger conversation of how Citizenship Washington Focus is being utilized within local unit 4-H leadership development. I am aware that many local extension units have a commitment to CWF that is outside the state coordinated experience.
The intentions of not sponsoring a state coordinated CWF experience in summer 2020 is to help Kansas 4-H better determine how to strategically leverage Citizenship Washington Focus and other 4-H Summits held at the National 4-H Conference Center throughout the rest of the year into the large strategic plan of growing tomorrow’s leaders. There is a tremendous legacy associated with CWF and Kansas 4-H. We are committed as an organization to have a wide array of attractive educational options that provide youth a pathway of fun, dynamic and memorable skill building experiences with friends!
Marietta Slater of Travel Value Tours, who has coordinated the logistics of past CWF experiences, and I have discussed this option and she looks forward to continuing to serve Kansas 4-H in this capacity when Kansas 4-H resumes participation. She has also graciously offered herself as a promoter of CWF to interested Kansas 4-H clientele. I am thankful for her historical and ongoing support of Kansas 4-H!
I would ask local unit KSRE professionals to share with me how you currently utilize CWF within your local planning. I realize that there is a great diversity of experience with our system so thank you for sharing your reflections in an email to me. This will be a great help to me as I work to assess the strategic placement and viability of statewide coordination of CWF in Kansas and develop a re-engagement plan for CWF in summer 2021.
To register individually for Citizenship Washington Focus: https://4-h.org/parents/citizenship-washington-focus/
To register individually for National Youth Summits in either STEM, Agri-Science, Healthy Living, or Photography that happen across this school year: https://4hcenter.org/tours-programs/national-youth-summits/