4-H EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT LEADERSHIP ACADEMY & FIELD LEADER DIALOGUES

Client: National 4-H Council

Dates: May - October 2023

Departments: Disruption, Resilience, interconnection

The Invitation

The National 4-H Council's Well Connected Communities Team invited Solvable to design and facilitate a youth academy, and develop an equitable development toolkit with the learnings and pedagogy. As part of its equitable development grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the goal was to inspire leadership and shift the way that youth design prototypes for equitable development in their own communities. Well-Being and Equity Project Manager, Sophia Rodriguez, reached out to our team to co-develop this work as part of her role.

Context

4-H is one of the United States’ oldest and largest youth development organizations. It is managed by Cooperative Extension—a community of more than 100 public land-grant universities across the United States that provides experiences where young people learn by doing. 4-H continually runs youth development programs, and remains interested in experimental pedagogies to develop youth leadership and prototypes.

SOLUTIONS

Part one of the project was a series of equitable development field leader dialogues via Zoom. We invited over twenty practitioners* from across myriad community development contexts to bring their wisdom and expertise on four themes: decolonial and anti-racist development, inner work for societal transformation, ecological thriving, and capacities and dispositions for equitable development. Their insights informed the development of an equitable development toolkit, as well as the curriculum for the youth academy. 

Part two of the project was the design and facilitation of an online youth academy, GAME ON!, for eight youth/adult teams from across the 4-H network. We were interested in how an immersive virtual experience could open young leaders to new ways to learn about equitable development in their home communities. Through Mural, we built a virtual world with five virtual lands that served as the containers for different inquiries in the learning journey.  Over the course of two months, participants met for synchronous Zoom sessions that gamified their learning and development.

GAME ON! fostered positive youth leadership development through three distinct areas: skills development, social development, and pedagogy innovation. It actively created opportunities for young people to learn, grow, and thrive simultaneously through experiential activities, adventures, and tapping into their natural curiosity.

testimonials

“I’m leaving the land of Equitanova to actively listen and be aware of my privilege with my community with love and respect.”

“If we educate ourselves and educate others about problems other people face, it increases our kindness, and increases the ways that we will advocate for others. It takes practice.”

“We need to put privilege in check, not just your own, but look within the system at where privilege exists and who has a deficit of opportunity for agency to make sure everybody’s included.”

“I’m leaving the land of Equitanova to collaborate with empathy, education, and inclusivity.”

* Special thanks to field leaders Noor Alshafie, Mikhail Davis, Tomas Delgado, Denise DeLuca. Jennifer George, Shewana Hairston McSwain, SJ Henderson, Anthony Johnson, Saleha Khumawala, Jessica Kiessel, Scarlett Kingsley, Charlene Marsh, Tay Moore, Kea Norrell-Aitch, Michal Osterweil, Natalie Perkins, Josie Plaut, Susan Sekaquaptewa, Sommer Sibilly-Brown, Brenda Soriano Villa, and Gregory Thaler