2022 Recipients

Adams County

Amanda Hollabaugh

Amanda saw an opportunity to highlight the value of 4-H and the importance of land conservation in her community. She worked with the Land Conservancy of Adams County to plan their annual picnic, which included a meal, lawn games, and a silent auction. Amanda also presented a speech on land preservation and 4-H to the guests after the meal. Overall, she ran a successful community event for over 170 guests and raised $10,000 through the silent auction to help offset event costs.

Alleghany County

Norah Carter

Seeing a need in her community, Norah developed and lead a hands-on educational program for teens and tweens about mindfulness and stress management coping mechanisms. She first pursued growing her own education on the subject, and co-lead anti-vaping workshops to practice her leadership skills. Then Norah adapted well to the changing needs and circumstances of her project as the pandemic progressed, leading 4 different groups of teens from diverse backgrounds and living situations through 4 to 6 educational sessions each over Zoom.

Bucks County

David Arnoldi

David loves science and originally sought to share that with his community during an in-person event. Despite how the pandemic changed things, he overcame this challenge. David adapted to working with a local school to lead a lava lamp room during their virtual science night. He designed and assembled lava lamp kits for each participating child, which he delivered to their teacher for distribution to participating students. During the zoom event David led the students through creating their own lava lamps while learning about the science behind the effect.

Addy Hazelrigg

In the spirit of service learning, Addy lead a pillowcase dress donation project for the Global Hope Alliance. She organized donations of materials and supplies, volunteers, and a virtual meeting with participants. A key part of this project for Addy was teaching other 4-H members how to make the dresses for donation to children in Africa. She overcame the challenges of conducting this project virtually and efficiently collected a total of 13 dresses for the Global Hope Alliance.

Ilene Stark

In pursuit of creating a positive impact on her community, Ilene organized a bake sale to raise the funds to supply her chosen animal toy project. Once supplies were acquired, she led a 4-H club meeting where she taught the other members to make catnip sock toys, dog rope toys, and cat scratching posts. The scratching post was particularly challenging to make, but Ilene and her 4-H club managed to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic and the scratching post design to complete 40 catnip toys and 25 rope dog toys in a single meeting. All of the toys and the remaining bake sale money were donated to the Bucks County SPCA.

Clearfield County

Macy Hughes

Macy chose to present an educational demonstration on fire safety, as it is a very important topic that is not discussed often enough in her community. She worked in concert with Sneath Fire Safety, a company that specializes in recharging fire extinguishers and presenting safety demonstrations. In an effort to overcome the restrictions posed by the pandemic and allow for the largest audience to benefit from her presentation possible, Macy developed a PowerPoint and video presentation on fire safety and how to extinguish fires. The video was then shared on the local fair website to benefit Macy's community.

Crawford County

Mallory Schroeder

Mallory knew she wanted to share her love for horses with those in her community through promoting safety and knowledge about horses. She organized a hoagie fundraiser to support her Introduction to Horses clinic for those 4-H members who were interested in horses but hadn't gotten to work with them yet. Mallory recruited volunteers and prepared the curriculum for her Introduction to Horses clinic. She was able to spark further interest in 4-H clubs in general, as well as horse and pony clubs. The 15 clinic participants Mallory taught learned how to safely handle their horse and gained knowledge in the basic showing and care of horses.

Fayette County

Cheyenne Bash

Cheyenne worked with a local elementary school's 4-H woodworking club to promote hand tool safety. She developed worksheets, a rule set poster, and two woodworking crafts for after she gave her presentation. Despite the challenges of scheduling due to pandemic restrictions, the woodworking workshop went well. Cheyenne led the elementary students through learning about hand tool safety and the two woodworking crafts during a club meeting.

Kenzie Mowry

In combination with the Health Rocks mentoring program, Kenzie founded a 4-H club to mentor youth between the ages of 8 and 12. She connected with youth to guide them in skills applicable to decision making, finding friends, trust issues, and being mindful of safety. Kenzie learned to keep 8- to 12-year-olds engaged and participating, while also growing her own skills in the subjects they learned about.

Isabel Poorbaugh

Isabel contacted an urban elementary school to participate in their Family Reading Nights during Ag Literacy Week. She read the participating students a book about where their food comes from, and brought along her ewe, lambs, and some farming tools and feed for the kids to explore. She also spoke with the kids about facts surrounding the agriculture industry that weren't covered in the book, answering any questions they had and expanding their understanding about food systems and 4-H.

Greene County

Hannah Cole

Hannah recognized a need at her local 4-H livestock barn. During events it often seemed like there was always a need for one thing or another that wasn't available, and she recalled some accidents and injuries that had happened during her tenure with 4-H. Hannah decided to acquire a well-stocked first aid kit for the barn. She did research and spoke with experts, eventually selecting first aid kits as well as Stop the Bleed kits for the barn. These were donated by McCracken Pharmacy and the Waynesburg Volunteer Fire Department. Hannah didn't stop there, and arranged for volunteer leaders and the County Council members to be trained in the use of these medical supplies.

Indiana County

Elizabeth Bruner

Elizabeth organized a 3-day wildlife, forestry, and aquatics day camp at a local park in Indiana County. Through her previous group affiliations, she had many connections she used to recruit speakers to run workshops, and also ran a workshop herself. Elizabeth recruited fellow 4-H teens to serve as counselors and provided them with a training session the day prior to camp. Participating groups were very impressed and clearly demonstrated the positive impact of this event.

Ryan Fabin

Ryan conducted a financial workshop for 25 teens on the importance of saving and investing from a young age. He recruited his uncle, a financial advisor, to assist with providing the content of this educational meeting. Due to the challenges of the pandemic, Ryan had to move his presentation to Zoom. He created self-knowledge tests and a refresher for participants to review one year after the workshop.

Micah Nygren

Micah sought to give back to his community through music, performing at a local nursing home. He chose 10 new pieces to learn in preparation for the performance and acquired tambourine and maracas for the residents to use to participate with the rhythm of the music while he played. Micah performed for about an hour for 29 residents and staff of the nursing home, even playing some requests, including the Marine's Hymn for an older veteran.

Lycoming County

Elizabeth Fishel

Elizabeth ran an art camp at the Lycoming County Fair's Kids Day. To prepare for the event, she chose several art projects and practiced them first, so that she could lead the participants through each activity properly. Expecting about 25 kids to participate, Elizabeth was blown away by a turnout of over 50 kids. This posed some challenges with regard to supplies, but the event was a great success.

Montgomery County

Tayler Garges

Tayler reached 255 youth on the importance of pollinators and the pollination process through the Teen Teach for Pollinator Habitat program. Adapting to the Zoom requirements of the pandemic, he educated participants from many groups across the state, including 4 counties and the statewide 4-H Entomology program. Additionally, Tayler worked with his school to create a pollinator garden outside the school greenhouse, and to implement the pollinator habitat lessons for future use in the zoology and environmental sciences classes.

Angela Lamina

Angela wanted to honor the veterans of her community and chose to plant a garden at the Southeastern Veterans Center. The land allotted to her by the center posed a challenge but, with the help of her family, Angela was able to till the land into a plant-able space. Reaching out to the community for support, she requested donations of flowers in each of the colors of the military flags on display. After successfully planning and planting her garden, Angela created an educational document on the colors of the flags represented by the flowers she'd chosen, and what those colors symbolized in the flags themselves, so that the veterans could look out their windows and appreciate the intentions behind the beauty.

Perry County

Elizabeth Lentz

Elizabeth worked with her local state park to contribute to their annual Christmas Walk display. They requested that she theme her contributions after a current franchise to provide more recognizable characters for the younger visitors to the park. Elizabeth chose the Star Wars franchise, as that would be enjoyable for all visitors to the Christmas Walk, including children. She created the figures from plywood and used the process of creating them to present an educational workshop on woodworking safety to her 4-H club.

Autumn Moore

Autumn lead outdoor educational programs as part of the Winter Forest School for young students, from pre-K through elementary school, during the winter months at a local state park. She covered topics applicable to the season and the space, teaching the participants about the seasons, snow and winter weather, and how animals deal with the winter, and led them through several hands-on activities like making a bird feeder out of pine cones.

Schuylkill County

Collin Felty

In support of promoting physical activity and play, Collin built a gaga ball pit for his community. He pursued funding and assembled the pit himself at his school. Collin then taught the 8^th grade students from his school how to play gaga ball and offered special instruction to younger groups as well. He also spoke with and educated the school district's gym teachers on the rules of gaga ball, so that others can continue to learn and enjoy the space.

Snyder County

Colette Hoffman

Through the use of pre-recorded videos and Zoom, Colette taught embryology lessons to first grade students. She kept the eggs in her incubator at home and developed lessons and activities to cover four weeks of interaction with the students. Colette taught them about the parts of the egg, chicken fertility and how to care for chicks, the process of hatching, and how to raise chickens in your own backyard for food. She also taught younger 4-H members how to conduct this educational program, so that it can continue in the future.

Somerset County

Hannah Brehm

Hannah planned, organized, and led the planting of a community garden, from inception to completion. She had children at Life Church plant seeds in small containers and taught them about gardening in the spring. Hannah and her family prepared the ground for planting and helped the children plant both the pumpkins they'd started in small containers, as well as other seeds. When the plants were ready for harvest, Hannah taught the children about what to look for when harvesting ripe crops. The produce was distributed to the church community.

Hunter Cornell

Recognizing a need in his community, Hunter hosted a nonperishable food drive. He incentivized other 4-H clubs in his community to participate by rewarding the club with the greatest number of donations with an ice cream party. Hunter collected almost two thousand items for the Berlin Food Pantry, which serves over a thousand community members in need.

Julie Mitchell

Julie sought to give back to her community through food donation as well. She organized the growing and harvest of over 500 pounds of acorn squash, which were donated to the Somerset County Mobile Food Bank. Julie also joined with the mobile food bank's volunteers to help distribute the acorn squash to their clientele. Afterwards, she worked with the local chapter of the Young Farmers to promote volunteer growing as an opportunity to give back to the community.

Elizabeth Salsgiver

Elizabeth was interested in helping her community in a unique way and chose to establish a library pantry attached to a food pantry. After securing permission from the Shanksville Grove to place her pantry there, Elizabeth built the pantry structure to sustain books, food, and toiletries. With the pantry built, she then reached out to the community for donations to stock it. Elizabeth has used social media to promote the presence and purpose of her pantry to her community.

Union County

Sylvia Rishel

Sylvia sought to give back to her community by cleaning up and planting flowers around the courtyard at the Elmcroft Senior Living Community. Unfortunately, the pandemic meant that she could not engage directly with the seniors as originally planned, but Sylvia was able to create a positive impact regardless by creating planters of flowers that she placed in the courtyard for the residents to enjoy.

Venango County

Cailyn Shaffer

Understanding the importance of community service, Cailyn wanted to give back to those in need of a little extra warmth in her community. She organized a project to make fleece crocheted blankets for the residents in two local cancer centers, a local nursing home, and a local homeless shelter. Cailyn reached out to local businesses for donations to purchase supplies. Once supplies were acquired, she hosted a community service day camp to teach community members to make the blankets and to educate those interested in the project on the importance of giving back to the community.

Washington County

Abigail and Jacob Mitchell

Abigail and Jacob supported their community's pollinators by building or purchasing bee hotels and then placing them securely in appropriate locations around their community. Abigail also went to youth club meetings, including the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H clubs, schools, and public libraries to educate students on the importance of bees, how to build bee hotels, and where it is safe to place bee hotels. Jacob and Abigail also planted bee friendly flowers around the bee hotels to support the preservation of these important pollinators.