Article from WSLS
By: SUSAN ELZEY | GoDanRiver
Published: March 29, 2012
If your idea of 4-H is a bunch of kids leading calves and sheep around a livestock arena, then it’s time for a reality check.
Today’s 4-H is all about learning leadership and lifetime skills, science and technology, friendship and even a fun summer camp with classes like Zumba.
This year’s camp for the Danville 4-H will be held from July 2-6 at theW.E. Skelton 4-H Educational Center at Smith Mountain Lake.
“At camp we learn about team building, leadership skills, emergency preparedness and risk management, howto work with teens from other places and life skills to be productive citizens,” explained Tadashi Totten, 4-H/youth development extension agent.
Working as team leaders for the summer camps are teen volunteers who have been members of 4-H for years and train for their responsibilities throughout the year.
ShontellWhite, a junior at GeorgeWashington High School, and Jared Lewis, a senior atGW, are two of the volunteers who count 4-H camp as the best week of their year.
“I’ve been going to camp since I was 9,” saidWhite.
“Then at 12 or 13, when I was able to, I became a counselor in training and then when I was 14 I became a teen volunteer.
Lewis has been a team leader at the camp for the past five years.
“My sister went one year, and I tagged along because I thought I was missing something,” he said. “I was.”
Something for everyone
Totten said there is a wide variety of activities at the camp: canoeing, kayaking, Zumba, horsemanship, scuba diving, Japanese art, archery, different levels of swimming and rock climbing.
White said when she first started going to camp there were just four classes to choose from, but nowthere are all kinds plus plenty of organized activities.
“We have campfires, carnivals, theme night, a dinner theater and a talent show,” she said.
There are also events that focus on community service, such as writing letters to the military.
Last year the camp hosted 62 campers and had 15 teen volunteers and two adults supervising. The camp enrollment caps at 75 campers, according to Totten, who added, “The more the merrier.”
According toWhite, the girl campers stay in a lodge that is “more like a hotel” with electricity, air conditioning, private bathrooms for each roomof three campers and one teen counselor.
The boys live a little more rustically with six to a roomin the boys lodge.
There are six educational centers similar to the one at Smith Lake throughout Virginia.
Not just camp
The Danville 4-H program isn’t just confined to the summer camp, however. There are programs throughout the year in various sites in the city, such as food and nutrition after-school programs, science projects, leadership clubs and programs with the Boys and Girls Clubs, local churches and theW.W. Moore, Jr. Juvenile Detention Home.
Curricula within the various programs include space and flight, natural resources and environmental education and foods, nutrition and health.
Last year more than 3,000 kids in Danville participated, Totten said.
There are 18 teen volunteers who train throughout the year to help with the programs and with camp.
“The teen volunteers serve as role models and leave great impressions,” Totten said.
“Most of the volunteers go to college and participate in leadership, taking the lessons they have learned.”
White said that as a child she was shy, but not anymore.
“I was not looking to make new friends (in 4-H), but now I can talk to anyone,” she said.
“Now the campers ask for me, and I have to act as a mom. The campers look up to us.”
The teens are even trained in different scenarios dealing with homesickness, but in all the years of camp only one child has been sent home for homesickness.
“We let the teen volunteers work it out,” Totten said.
White said the best thing is that after the campers get over their homesickness, they want to come back the next year.
Healthy and happy
Safety is the No. 1 priority at the camp, Totten said.
There is always an emergency medical technician on the staff and no child has ever been sent to the hospital. Adults stay in separate rooms from the children, and the teen volunteers are in the rooms with the children.
“Every child participates, is healthy and has a good time,” he said.
The cafeteria even deals with food allergies.
“It’s the one week I don’t get any sleep,” Totten said with a laugh. “But I enjoy seeing the smiling faces.”
Lewis calls the camp “a comfort.”
“I can go there and be nothing short of who I am and that’s OK,” he said.
Elzey is a freelance writer for the Register & Bee.
Article from WSLS