GLOBE program provides national, international experiences for 4-H youth

Registration open for next Tier I camp 

By: Paul Schattenberg, 210-859-5752, [email protected]

Contact: Dr. Darlene Locke, 979-845-6533, [email protected]

COLLEGE STATION — Texas 4-H has announced the second opportunity for the Global Leadership Opportunities Beyond Education, or GLOBE, international program — a two-tiered citizenship and leadership program for 4-H members in grades 6-12.

“The program is designed to engage intermediate and senior 4-H youth to look at their own communities through the eyes of people experiencing hunger and poverty and be inspired to take humanitarian action,” said Dr. Darlene Locke, Texas 4-H youth development education specialist, College Station. “As they begin to understand the perspectives of other cultures, they are more likely to have increased respect for those who are different from them.”

Locke said the program consists of Tier I and Tier II experiences with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service personnel chaperoning all program activities. The program was initiated in June 2016 with 27 youth completing Tier I activities and 13 completing Tier II activities this year.  

She said the next Tier I camp is scheduled for June 26-28. Registration is limited to 40 youth and is available through 4-H Connect at http://bit.ly/1KL6xmz. The cost is $250 and registration will remain open until all spaces are filled. Registration includes travel, meals and lodging and a commemorative T-shirt.

“It is a collaboration of Texas 4-H Youth Development and Heifer International that creates an international experience without actually traveling abroad,” Locke said.

The Tier I experience includes an experiential leadership and teambuilding camp at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas, Locke said. The ranch is a 1,200-acre educational farm dedicated to educating youth and adults about Heifer International’s program and activities to promote sustainable solutions to global hunger, poverty and environmental degradation.

“The Tier I experience is the Global Challenge, which uses problem-solving and communication activities to help participants learn team-building skills that can be drawn upon and used to assist them in the ranch’s overnight Global Village experience,” she explained. “It involves cultural and geographic competency, leadership, life skills and teamwork development, along with vicarious immersion and hands-on simulation.”

Locke said Tier I must be completed to advance to Tier II, but advancement is not mandatory.

“The ranch has partnered with and helped communities with developing sustainable livelihoods for more than 70 years,” she said. “Through their efforts, 25 million families worldwide have been able to help lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. Their holistic approach focuses on increasing income and assets, food security and nutrition, and improving the environment.”

Locke said participants in the previous Tier I activities reported the experience changed their perspective on poverty and how to address it.

“I learned an entirely different concept at Heifer International with GLOBE,” said Christopher Childress of Henderson County 4-H. “Instead of just giving food to help the needy, we looked at    teaching them how to be sustainable. We learned about milk, manure, meat, muscle, money, materials and motivation as ways of lifting people out of poverty.”

Participants take a chartered bus to Heifer Ranch. The bus embarks from Austin with stops along the way in Hillsboro and Sulphur Springs.

Locke said challenge participants spend the first night in the “Heifer Hilton,” an open-air bunk barn. The second night is spent in the Global Village, which simulates the challenging conditions in impoverished areas of Zambia, Thailand, Guatemala, China, Appalachia, urban slums and a refugee camp.

“In the Tier II experience, 4-H youth focus on global communities and service learning that makes a difference,” she said. “Participants will also travel to a predetermined location, either abroad or within the U.S., such as a Native-American reservation, and engage in cultural experiences and perform a service-learning activity to benefit the peoples of the community.”

Locke said the Tier II experience this year was in the villages of Turrialba and Mollejones in Costa Rica.

“4-H members were fully immersed in the Central American culture as they lived with Spanish-speaking host families,” she said. “They experienced firsthand the hardships of poverty and food insecurity. And while in Mollejones, youth participants of GLOBE donated school supplies and sports equipment to benefit the local elementary school and community center.”

Locke said youth participants said because of their GLOBE experience they now understand the impact that can be made on a society through philanthropy and would be able to identify and put on a service learning program in their own communities.

For more information on the GLOBE program, contact Locke at 979-845-6535, [email protected] or Charlene Belew at 432-336-8585 or [email protected].