Making Crawfordsville Beautiful, One Street At A Time

On Thursday, April 13th, you may have driven through downtown Crawfordsville and saw a group of youth that you thought were taking in the sights. However, these youths are part of the Montgomery County 4-H Junior Leader program and they were doing more than taking in the sights of Crawfordsville.

As part of their Earth Day celebration, the Junior Leaders spent that Thursday evening picking up trash throughout downtown Crawfordsville. This has become an annual tradition in one small effort to make a difference in our downtown area. There were 19 Junior Leaders that evening helping pick up trash and within just a few blocks, they picked up 3-4 bags of trash. Even just taking an hour to pick up this amount of trash truly does make a difference. They realize it is everyone’s responsibility to help take the initiative to keep our community clean.

One of pillars of the 4-H program is civic engagement. “4-H civic engagement programs empower young people to be well-informed citizens who are actively engaged in their communities and the world” (https://4-h.org/parents/civic-engagement/). Through a variety of educational programs and opportunities, such as picking up trash in our community, youth gain skills to be positive, contributing members of their community starting from their time in the 4-H program to when they are an adult and having families of their own.

Junior Leaders is a great opportunity within the 4-H program for youth that are currently in grades 7-12 to enhance their leadership and other important life skills. Junior Leaders also teaches youth the importance of giving back to the community through a variety of community service projects that are completed throughout the year. These projects vary from year to year and are based solely on the needs in the community.

The 4-H organization is a great organization for your youth to get involved with. There are so many opportunities for them to enhance their leadership skills, become involved in the community, make new friends, and so much more. We are always accepting 4-H enrollments. If you have questions or are interested, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Extension office at (765)364-6363 or e-mail [email protected].

– Abby Morgan is the 4-H Youth Development Educator at the Montgomery County Purdue Extension Office. She can be reached at [email protected] or 765-364-6363.