LEARN MORE ABOUT 4-H - A Positive Youth Development Program

4-H offers so much for you to do. You find the path that makes sense for you! Join a club, explore your interests, build leadership skills and make connections with new friends, mentors, future employers​ and finally, have fun!!!

​Positive Youth Development (PYD) is a approach that guides our 4-H Program to promote services, opportunities, and supports so that young people can develop to their full potential. All our programs, regardless of the 4-H project, teach life skills such as communication and understanding of science.

4-H has empowered young people to use their head, heart, hands, and health to reach their full potential and live by the 4-H pledge:
I pledge my HEAD to clearer thinking,
my HEART to greater loyalty,
my HANDS to larger service,
and my HEALTH to better living,
for my club, my community,
​my county, and my world.

4-H by the numbers

the six c's of positive youth development 

  • Competence: Positive view of one’s actions in specific areas, including social and academic skills.
  • Confidence: An internal sense of overall positive self-worth and self-efficacy.
  • Connection: Positive bonds with people and institutions that are reflected in exchanges between the individual and their peers, family, school, and community and in which both parties contribute to the relationship.
  • Character: Respect for societal and cultural norms, possession of standards for correct behaviors, a sense of right and wrong (morality), and integrity.
  • Caring: A sense of sympathy and empathy for others.
  • Contribution: Contributions to self, family, community, and to the institutions of a civil society.

youth development Research Study & Fact sheet

​Cornell Cooperative Extension is an equal opportunity, affirmative action educator and employer.
​The County of Dutchess partially funds Cooperative Extension Programs in Dutchess County.