CHESTERFIELD—Since the early 1900s, Virginia 4-H has been committed to shaping minds, cultivating leadership skills and encouraging community engagement among the state’s youth.
“4-H uses experiential learning to help young people be better citizens and better individuals in the working world,” said Chad Proudfoot, Virginia 4-H organizational specialist at Virginia Tech. “All of the programming revolves around forming areas of agriculture, civic engagement, healthy living and STEM education. We want youth to become wonderful and positive adults.”
The national 4-H movement dates to the late 1800s. It began as corn clubs where farm boys competed to grow high-quality crops using science and experimenting with new methods to improve them, while encouraging personal achievement.
In 1908, Virginia Cooperative Extension formed the state’s first corn club in Dinwiddie County. The following year, clubs opened for rural girls to learn home economics like food preservation and gardening. In the 1910s, states in the segregated South began clubs for rural African Americans and minorities before integration in 1964.
While early 4-H programming focused on agriculture and homemaking skills for rural youth, the organization evolved between the 1980s and early 2000s to incorporate new subjects like STEM, civic engagement and the arts.
Today, Virginia’s 96 counties and most independent cities have 4-H clubs, offering a diverse range of programs for roughly 160,000 members.
“It’s known as four-fold youth development,” Proudfoot explained. “If you have programming set up to engage youth to use their heads, hearts, hands and health together, that will help get them started on a good path in life.”
And for some, like Sarah Gregory and her family in Chesterfield County, 4-H is more than an extracurricular activity. It’s a legacy of education, community connection and leadership that spans generations.
“We would practice together and do our presentations,” she reminisced. During the 1950s, she attended 4-H workshops at Virginia State College, now Virginia State University. She participated in home economics and agricultural programming, competed at local and state levels and led club meetings.
“It’s how we learned public speaking—how to talk to people.”
Gregory has been involved in 4-H since the days of racial segregation—when she couldn’t fully benefit from everything the organization had to offer—through today as she volunteers and educates youth from all backgrounds. She leads multiple 4-H programs, including the Chesterfield County 4-H Business Bunch Club, a civic service and youth leadership development organization. Her 60-plus years of volunteering led to her induction into the National 4-H Hall of Fame in 2022.
Understanding the value of hands-on vocational and life skills, she instilled that same passion for 4-H in her daughters, Selicia Allen and Shawnda Randall.
“In our club we were officers, vice president, president. I think we did all of it,” Allen said. “We were always learning leadership skills.”
For Randall, interacting with members from across the commonwealth and judging competitions at the annual 4-H State Congress helped her and others “get out of their shells”—something that aided her throughout her teaching career.
“It’s built a foundation that guides you through life, and teaches you how to be successful,” Randall said.
-Virginia Farm Bureau
