Reservation Youth crafting with a purpose

Creativity was flowing during the 2019 4-H Holiday Make & Take event, held at Keller Community Center on Sunday Dec. 15.

This annual event is a community collaboration and facilitated and sponsored by Keller Valley Highriders 4-H Club and Colville Reservation WSU Extension. This event is supported by: Keller Community Center; Keller Boys & Girls Club; Keller Community Club; CCT K – 12 program; Omak Home Depot; and many generous people who donated supplies. These collaborative efforts made for a fun-filled day of crafting, visiting and community interaction.

The holiday season can be financially stressful on families. To help alleviate some of this stress, the goal of this event is to demonstrate that youth can make and give nice items for less money than purchasing similar ready-made items for holiday gifting. Each youth was provided a worksheet that displayed the cost if they were to purchase each item and the cost of supplies if they were to make the item. The worksheet also showed the savings difference. In theory, if each youth were to make all seven items instead of purchasing them, they would experience a savings of $47.29.

"We try to keep the projects simple and affordable," stated Linda McLean, Colville Reservation Extension Director/4-H Educator. "We focus on useful and practical projects; something that the youth and parents can actually use and appreciate." McLean continued, "While our focus is showing youth how they can save money by making gift items, we also want the youth to gain and retain skills that will help them to continue to create craft and gift items as they mature."

4-H leaders and volunteers taught youth how to make seven different projects. These projects consisted of easy-to-make items, designed to meet the learning needs of all ages and skill levels, from beginner to advanced crafter. The youth were able to wrap these items for gift-giving to their family members. Supplies were all donated by different community and tribal programs, as well as by individual community members.

A Community Service project was also incorporated as one of the hands-on projects: Reusable Shopping Bags. The youth upcycled tank tops into a shopping bag. These bags will be donated to the Keller Community Store for use by their customers, in lieu of plastic bags, thus helping to limit the amount of trash that enters the waste stream.

Thank you to all the volunteers who taught projects; without you the youth could not learn. Thank you to the generosity of those who donated supplies; without you we could not provide as many projects. And finally, thank you to all the families whom attended, participated and made this event so successful!

If you would like more information on this or other Extension programs, please contact Linda McLean, Colville Reservation WSU Extension Director, (509) 634-2305 or ljmclean@wsu.edu . Or you may contact the WSU Ferry County Extension office at, (509) 775-5225 ext. 1116 or the WSU Okanogan County Extension office (509) 422-7245. Extension programs and employment are available to all without discrimination. Evidence of noncompliance may be reported through your local Extension office. 

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