Luke wrote this for the 4-H newsletter, thought you'd all enjoy it too.
My Leap of Faith into the State Exchange Project
Have you ever felt nervous about joining a baseball team, doing your first 4-H presentation, or even riding a roller coaster for the very 1st time? After 6 months of research about bicycles, I finally felt confident about buying one. But sometimes research doesn't help, sometimes the best way to learn or experience things is to take a leap of faith and just do it.
I had heard of State Exchange before this year, but hadn't researched it, or known anyone who had done it. So when Karen Sherman from Redwood 4-H came and talked to us about the Contra Costa/Alameda County State Exchange Project, I was intrigued and decided to do it. That doesn't mean that I wasn't nervous or unsure about doing it, but our first official meeting on Sunday, Feb 10th. helped reassure me that this is going to be a great experience. If you didn't hear Mrs. Sherman at the club meeting, here's a basic overview of what State Exchange is: it is a program run by the US government where 4-H clubs send a group of members to a different state. In July 2019, our group will go to Montana, and we will each get assigned a "twin" or buddy, at whose house we stay for a week. During that week, all the California and Montana kids meet up as a group and do different activities and field trips that the Montana kids plan for us. Then, in July 2020, the Montana kids come to California and stay their twin, and we take them on field trips and do activities, such as Alcatraz, Santa Cruz Boardwalk, museums, and other fun things. I'm excited about our partner state being Montana, mainly because I love visiting family in rural Michigan, and enjoy being outside and in the country.
In the beginning of the meeting, the parents and kids met together and discussed what State Exchange is, our responsibilities in housing, feeding and transporting our visitors as well as some of the financial obligations that might come up, such as paying for activities. Since we do not want our parents to have to pay for the group activities, we need to raise a good amount of money before July 2020 to pay for the field trips and outings when the Montana 4-H kids come to the Bay Area to stay with us. In order to raise the money, we will be doing fundraisers , such as working a crab feed which involves serving customers and set-up and clean-up. Another fund-raiser we are doing is the food booth at the Showmanship Clinic in Contra Costa County, which is like the Small Animal Field Day in Alameda. A new one this year for State Exchange is Ducks for Bucks which is normally only our club and Bayside, but the leaders liked the idea so much that they agreed to sell Ducks with us.
After that the kids and the parents split up into two groups. In the youth meeting, we introduced ourselves and got to know each other a little bit. We then discussed Officer positions, and who should be what officer. I took the Secretary position, but since we had more kids than positions, we came up with offices like Parliamentarian and Historian, which we really don't need but means everyone has an office. We somehow ended up with three Recreation Officers, two Sergeant-at-Arms officers, and two Hospitality officers. I guess we will have twice the rules and five times the fun! After that we discussed rules and expected behavior during our Montana visit. We need to try and be nice, respectful, as well as mannerly. We then talked about the dress code so we cannot wear anything inappropriate or political. And finally we need to bring a house gift to Montana, something that is only available in California such as certain chocolates, key chains or other items like that.
Although I am still a bit nervous about going to Montana, attending this meeting and meeting the leaders and other kids in this project reassured me that this is one leap that will be worth it.
Luke Boreczky
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