Seedlings 4-H Club serves meal to Stutsman advisory council

Seedlings 4-H Club members turned a regular NDSU Extension Stutsman County Advisory Council meeting in Jamestown into a lesson in service, teamwork and responsibility when they prepared a meal for the council on April 14.

The hands-on assignment gave the club’s youth a chance to live out the 4-H motto, Learn by Doing, in a setting that mattered beyond their own club. Instead of talking about civic responsibility in the abstract, the members contributed directly to a county advisory meeting and saw how local extension leadership works from the inside.

That kind of experience fits the way NDSU Extension says 4-H is built in Stutsman County. The program describes 4-H as offering hands-on, real-life experiences through projects, activities and events, with most club work organized locally and supported by staff from county extension offices. In Stutsman County, that makes 4-H less of a classroom add-on and more of a pipeline for practical leadership.

The Stutsman County office also serves as a direct link between residents and North Dakota State University, delivering research-based information through educational programs, publications and events. Advisory council meetings are part of that structure, helping guide what Extension offers in the county while giving club members a chance to participate in a public setting.

The meal service also fits a broader pattern of 4-H clubs taking on visible community projects in Stutsman County. In a 2023 Extension release, 34 North Dakota 4-H clubs with 727 members earned healthy club recognition for the 2022-2023 year, and the Moon Lake 4-H Club in Stutsman County was singled out for projects that included raised garden beds placed in front of the county office. Those examples show that local 4-H work often reaches well past club meetings and into the civic life of the county.

For Stutsman County, that matters because the county’s future depends on young people learning how to show up, work together and finish a job that serves others. A meal prepared for an advisory council may look simple, but it gives the next generation a real place in the institutions that shape community life.