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By CHARLOTTE PERKINS
Journal Staff Writer
“I started crying,” Jazmin Thomas said. “I just had to leave the room.”
The 2009 Perry High School graduate, daughter of Paula Thomas of Perry, who is now a freshman at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, said, “I can’t imagine my life without 4-H.”
That’s where she learned leadership skills, where she became the number one poultry judger in Georgia (and on the Reserve Championship Team nationally), how she happened to work as an intern with Stacy Ellison, the Houston County 4-H agent, and decided that she wanted to be a 4-H agent herself.
She learned about the proposal to eliminate the 107 year old youth program while hearing about still more cuts. The President of ABAC was explaining to students about cuts their college was facing.
Margo Braski just didn’t believe it.
“I thought it must be a rumor when my sister told me,” she said. “I’m going to the 4-H national conference in about two weeks. I’ve got a job as a 4-H counselor at Rock Eagle this summer.”
“And how could they close down Rock Eagle?” she asked. “That is such a unique place.”
The daughter of Pat and Christine Braski of Warner Robins, Braski got involved in 4-H at Sacred Heart School and is continuing in the program even though she’s now at Mt. DeSales in Macon. Her dad, Pat, owns the two Chik-Fil-A restaurants in Warner Robins. Her mom, Christine, was once Houston County’s 4-H Agent, and through 4-H she has had leadership opportunities and also carved out a career plan – to study food science and environmental science.
Georgia’s 4-H program, originally formed to emphasize farming and agricultural skills for rural children and teens, and to provide opportunities to compete with everything from gardening to hog shows, still has a big emphasis on agriculture, but has added many components such as food science and speech contests, leadership training, energy conservation and citizenship.
Margo Braski and Jazmin Thomas are just two of approximately 1000 young people involved yearly in the Houston County 4-H program, which is run by the University of Georgia County Extension Service and has members in 22 schools – both public and private – as well as providing programs for home-schooled students.
Stacy Ellison, the Houston County 4-H Agent says that she doesn’t know exactly when the Houston County 4-H was formed, but she knows that the state program began in 1904 and Houston County wouldn’t have been long after that.
Today’s 4-H’ers, according to the University of Georgia, serves over 156,000 young people on an annual basis, and many of those young people have been responding to the suggestion of losing the 4-H by doing what today’s young people do. They’re hitting the social media, and as of Thursday, the Facebook page for “Save the 4-H” had 5000 members, and word was flying.
Now, along with their leadership training they’re getting a hands-on lesson in civics. They’re calling their representatives in the General Assembly themselves, and encouraging others to do the same. An hour after talking to the Home Journal by telephone, Jazmin Thomas sent the following “hotline” telephone numbers for anybody who wants to call the budget committee in Atlanta and express a view on saving the Georgia 4-H program: Here are the numbers that have sort of become “budget hotlines”.
(404) 463-2247
(404) 657-0406
(404) 656-5020
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