Cristine Schulz grew up in a small, rural Georgia town where the 4H club was a key component of her social and educational life.
“What I loved most was how it connected me to a network of friends from other places outside my normal circle,” she said.
Now the mother of 12- and 14-year-old daughters, the Roswell resident makes monthly treks to the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead so her own kids can have the same experience – and more.
“They interact with people other than the same people they see at school, and they have activities that are fun and engaging,” she said. “They have a ball, so it’s really a sort of sneaky education.”
It’s often a surprise as well when people learn that Buckhead is home to a 4H branch, given the organization’s long history of locating largely in agricultural areas. And while it still has a strong presence in communities where crops and livestock play a key role, it’s also found a following in urban areas around its core components: head, heart, hands and health.
“The hardest thing we deal with is people thinking 4H doesn’t exist, or it’s just about cows and chickens,” said Laurie Murrah-Hanson, who runs the program that’s a joint venture between the History Center and the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Georgia.
“We still offer those very traditional programs, but here we focus on science and healthy living. With childhood obesity being such a challenge, we do a lot of healthy living programming around nutrition, physical activity and mental health,” she said.
The free monthly programs, usually held for 90 minutes on a Sunday afternoon, may include exploring the sciences around food production, plants, animals and environment. Sessions are open to students from kindergarten through high school who live or attend school in Fulton County.
“We typically break into three age groups with their own lessons,” said Murrah-Hanson. “We also stress citizenship and leadership, so each meeting has a community service component. We’ve made chemo care bags for children in local hospitals and cards for firefighters and police. We also have a game and a snack.”
Murrah-Hanson has been with the program since it launched almost three years ago, after a grassroots effort lobbied to have a club on Fulton’s northside. Before that, the closest was in College Park.
“We have a lot of 4H alumni in the area, and they wanted a club for their children to get involved in,” she said. “The discussion started around extending the program to the central and northern part of the county that wasn’t being served. Then the History Center offered to fund part of the salary of an extension agent to be based here, and to provide us with office space and internet access. That’s given us a platform to get the word out that we’re here to meet the needs and interests of urban youth.”
The Buckhead club, along with the in-school programming, summer camps and outings the extension service provides, has proved so popular that plans are in the works to hire another educator for a Sandy Springs location. Meanwhile, the public is invited to learn more about 4H programs for the 2019-2020 school year at an open house from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Aug. 4 at the History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road.
More information is also online at ugaextension.org/fulton.
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Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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