What is 4-H?
4-H is a community of young people across the United States learning leadership, citizenship and life skills. It began a century ago as an educational program for the nation's rural youth. Today, 4-H meets the needs of and engages young people in positive youth development experiences. 4-H is the youth development education program of the University of Nevada, Reno Extension.
4-H is the largest out-of-school youth organization in the United States with over 7 million members. There are over 49,000 young people engaged in 4-H programs across the state of Nevada alone. The 4-H program promotes life skills development through an expanding number of delivery modes: 4-H community and project clubs, in-school and after-school programs, special interest groups, library programming, recreational and community center partnerships, camping opportunities and much more.
4-H participants are all youth, ages 5 to 19, taking part in programs provided as the result of actions planned and initiated by Extension personnel in cooperation with volunteers and families. 4-H is characterized as being community-centered, volunteer-led, Extension staff supervised, research-based, home and family-oriented, publicly and privately funded and responsive to change. It offers youth opportunities in communications, leadership, career development, citizenship, healthy living, science, technology, engineering and math and more.