2021 Recipients

Cara Arnoldi – Bucks County

Project: Sew and distribute masks to her neighbors that did not have suitable masks.
Impact: She sewed 70+ masks, one for each family of the neighborhood, packaged them safely, and delivered one to each house. Cara learned how to organize a major service project and also learned how to make a mask pattern.

Kendyl Cersoli – Tioga County

Project: Sew and distribute burp cloths to hospitals that have infants for long term care and to agencies that work with low-income families.
Impact: To date 326 burp cloths have been produced by 4-H and community members (surpassing the original goal of 150). Kendyl learned how to help a group of individuals obtain a usable product by networking within her local 4-H clubs and outside agencies. She also learned that creating a sewing pattern that you understand and that others understand takes trial and error.

Hannah Gaibor – Somerset County

Project: Hannah created a self-led virtual day camp that taught youth about pollinators and conservation.
Impact: She learned to be adaptable and flexible with plans, and also how to convert teaching styles from in person to virtual. She also learned how to make a more complex topic easily understandable for all and how to make a virtual presentation fun and engaging.

Kelly Gillis – Westmoreland County

Project: Organized a farm to table dinner to benefit the culinary arts program at her local CTC school where she was a student.
Impact: Along with fellow classmates, she served more than 200 guests with all locally sourced food from farmers in Westmoreland County and PA preferred businesses such as Turners, Bellview Products, Rivendale Farms, etc. At the end of the day, they raised $4,150 dollars to donate to the culinary program. She learned a lot of money management skills as well as time management. She is so thankful for all of her friends, family, and 4-H family that helped her through the process.

Lexie Kalaluhi – Westmoreland County

Project: Hosted quilt days and helped people learn how to quilt.
Impact: She used the squares made by the participants to make a quilt in honor of her 4-H leader Mrs. Bash. She then sold the quilt at the Westmoreland fair and raised over $2,000 for cancer patients in Westmoreland county. She learned a lot about advertisement and how to get word out about her event and learned about money management while planning the event.

Emma Martz – Somerset County

Project: Organized a Ryan’s Case for Smiles for her Diamond Project. The project was about bring comfort to not only the children in the Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital but also their families.
Impact: She organized a virtual workshop to teach fellow 4-H members how to sew pillowcases. Despite having to make changes to her initial plan she was able to successfully teach over Zoom and members that participated were able to sew the pillowcases and get them back to her.

Cali Moore – Lycoming County

Project: Built benches to provide additional seating at her local county fair.
Impact: She learned planning and budgeting. She also gained additional communication skills working with sponsors and businesses in our community. Her favorite part of the project was building and painting the benches with younger kids because they were so eager to help and see the final results.

Anna Norton - Centre County

Project: Created two murals for the St. Johns Memorial Learning Garden.
Impact: The stained glass one is hanging in a window near the entrance of the learning garden. The painted one is in the learning garden for babies and toddlers to learn colors and animals. She learned how to be patient and take her time to make things. Also she learned how to better her time management skills.

Lily Palfrey – Indiana County

Project: Benefit deployed National Guard service members with care packages, present “We Serve Too", giving military children a chance to have their voices heard about what military life is like.
Impact: Lily raised funds, collected donated items, packed 159 care packages, and shipped them to deployed service members. She learned about banking, budgeting, public speaking, organizing events and other useful skills. Most importantly she learned that our community is amazing in the way that everyone is able to come together and do something like this project.

Katie Percival – Lycoming County

Project: Make at least 1,000 origami flowers for the residents of Valley View Nursing Center and inform people of the importance of staying involved with senior citizens.
Impact: Katie decided to make paper flowers because they can be kept year round, without requiring care or causing allergies. This project was important to Katie because she has aging family members. She wanted to complete a project that brought awareness to different aspects of a senior citizen’s mental health and bring individuals in a local nursing home a cheerful reminder that we care about them.

Rachael Percival – Lycoming County

Project: Build a book-lending library box in a place easily accessible and used by members of her community.
Impact: The main goal of her project was for community members to have access to books they could read for learning and entertainment purposes. She chose this project because of how much she loves reading. She wanted to share that love and believed it would be a great way to give people a way to learn and be entertained, as well as connect with each other.

Stefani Strouse – Schuylkill County

Project: Completed a "Kids Corral" where she built corn hole boards, giant jenga, giant tic tac toe, and giant checkers.
Impact: She learned that even doing the smallest bit of improvement to something can make others so much happier. Her favorite part of completing the project was seeing the smiles on all the kids faces while playing these games.

Emma Wassel – Montgomery County

Project: Making a promotional video for Montgomery County 4-H.
Impact: Over the course of a year she filmed various events and edited them together to create a video that she could share with the public to get new members interested in 4-H. It was then shown at an online Zoom open house this summer. While doing her project she learned the commitment it can take to make something amazing. Even though it was hard to tell herself somedays, she still got up and worked on it because she knew the ending would be all worth it.