Letter to the Editor: Volunteer for New Brunswick 4-H

If you are over 21 and interested in working with youth in New Brunswick, I have news for you: New Brunswick 4-H needs you.

Right now, New Brunswick 4-H needs adult volunteer club leaders for arts and crafts club, for health and nutrition programming, and for film-making/script-writing clubs. We would also love to start a Junior Council, a leadership club for youth ages 12-15. Until a leader for this club steps forward, we cannot take the first steps for planning this club.

New Brunswick 4-H staff (there are two of us) are willing to help you recruit members and reserve space for your meetings. We’ll also provide you with curricula and supplies to lead weekly meetings. But we still need you—your energy, your creativity, and your dedication.

Still not convinced? Let me tell you my story: Working with youth through 4-H has taught me more about myself, and helped me grow up (and grow into a better person).

For example: Ever since I stopped being a teenager, I’ve been terrified of teens. It’s because I was such a rotten one—I dyed my hair black and pink. I rolled my eyes at my parents. I talked back to teachers. I thought I knew everything.

Needless to say, the idea of trying to work with teens, imaging they’d all be as challenging as I was, was a terrifying thought…until I got the opportunity to do so in New Brunswick.

In the last year I’ve watched the New Brunswick 4-H Teen Council lead events, volunteer to help younger 4-Hers learn new things, raise funds, and manage their own budget. These young people are smart and kind, talented and energetic. I am so excited for a future where these teens are the doctors, lawyers, professors, and community leaders in New Brunswick and beyond. And I don’t think I’ve gotten an eyeroll from one of them yet—not even as they listened to me belt pop songs at the top of my lungs while I sat in the passenger seat of a 12-passenger van after a group trip to Trenton for a service project. Like I said, they are kind and caring kids.

4-H is a youth development program, but I also cannot overstate the ways that volunteering with youth in New Brunswick has helped me develop into a more trusting, open-minded, and optimistic person.

You have things to give, and things to learn from, the youth of New Brunswick. So get involved, and be a leader with New Brunswick 4-H. Contact us now at (732) 828-0032 or newbrunswick4h@gmail.com to lend your skills and talents to the youth of New Brunswick.

-Laura Eppinger

AmeriCorps*VISTA at New Brunswick 4-H