Our Illinois 4-H Story

Lessons come wrapped in all types of boxes. Here are five lessons every 4-H member knows. #5: You aren't going to win every time, and that's okay. How you lose is just as important as how you win. There's no way you're going to get through life #1 all the time. Real champions...

What makes an Illinois teenager decide to travel to a new country and live for weeks with a family she's never met? For Lana Fitzgerald, it's adventure of the unknown. Lana was part of the 4-H intercultural exchange program and lived with a host family in South Korea for four weeks last summer....

Some members do 4-H projects, then there is Anthony Warmack's version of a 4-H project. For years, he has made environmental sciences his passion. Robert Woodruff of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance has collaborated with Anthony on water quality and nutrient loss projects in the area. "I was...

4-H, the largest youth development program in the nation, is calling on all alumni to raise their hands to help bring 4-H to 10 million youth by 2025. Currently 4-H empowers nearly six million young people in every county across America, including 26,500 4-H'ers in Illinois. For more than 100...

Some 4-H teens have taken the "hands to larger service" challenge of the 4-H pledge to heart and focused their 4-H energy feeding their neighbors. Clare VanSpeybroeck was recently honored by Illinois 4-H as a state community service award winner for her efforts fighting local hunger. Together, with...

We're listening now more than ever. Jump over to 4-H.illinois.edu and look at the new Illinois 4-H website. Yeah, we did that! Illinois 4-H is a thriving, growing, vital program reaching nearly 200,000 Illinois youth a year. In the past five...

You wouldn't think it would work. The shooting sports program is one of the fastest growing projects in Illinois 4-H. The program offers four disciplines of focus: archery, rifle, shotgun, and wildlife/hunting. For some teens, shooting sports is the one reason they joined and stayed in 4-H during...

If you attended University of Illinois, this campus will always hold special memories for you. As a young graduate, I would stop by campus on my way through from where my first job took me to where I was born. After marriage and babies, I would still stop, toddlers in tow, to show them the quad,...

"4-H has made me everything I am." That's tall praise from a woman whose family name adorns the University of Illinois woman's softball field, but it is said with the sincerest gratitude about the youth development program which she says instilled her desire for lifetime service and learning....