Submitted by Dar Zuch, General Leader, Rocky Mountain 4-H Multiclub
More than a century after its founding, 4-H remains one of Canada’s quietest and most consequential youth movements. In Alberta, roughly 5,000 members and 2,000 volunteer leaders continue a tradition that began in 1913 with a simple conviction: that young people
learn best not by being told, but by being trusted to do.
That founding principle — “Learn to do by doing” — sounds unremarkable until you notice what it now stands against. A generation of children is growing up with more structured screen time than structured skill time. Many have never planned a project from start to finish, spoken in front of an audience of peers, or been given the chance to lead something that mattered to other people. These are not small omissions. They are the foundations that adult competence and civic confidence are built on.
4-H Alberta has designed its program to restore those foundations deliberately. Members work through hands-on projects in agriculture, food, technology, entrepreneurship, and the trades. They learn parliamentary procedure by running their own club business meetings. They compete in a public speaking program that begins locally and advances through district, regional, and provincial levels — a pipeline that produces some of the most poised young speakers in the province. They attend winter and summer camps at Bragg Creek and elsewhere, where friendships form across communities. They serve in leadership positions, judge projects, run fundraisers, and travel to conferences that expose them to a national organization operating in every province.
The strength of the program is its layering. A child who joins a local 4-H club at age six can spend more than a decade progressing through age-appropriate opportunities, each one asking a little more of them, each one giving a little more back. Few youth programs are built for that kind of long horizon.
Rocky Mountain 4-H Multiclub is the 4-H club serving Calgary’s southeast, welcoming members ages 6to 20 from McKenzie Towne, Auburn Bay, Cranston, Copperfield, Mahogany, New Brighton, Seton, and neighbouring communities. Our first business meeting of the program year is Friday, October 16 at the Auburn Bay Co-op community room. Learn more at sites.google.com/4hab.com/rocky-mountain, or contact Dar Zuch, General Leader, at [email protected].
