An unfortunate fact of life is that emergencies and disasters can and do occur. These events, which include earthquakes, wildfires, outbreaks of infectious disease, and more, can happen at any time and often do so with little or no warning. Not only do these events have the potential to affect every facet of life, but local emergency services can quickly become overwhelmed.

California alone has had no shortage of disasters. In 2022, the State experienced 7,490 wildfires, with 362,455 acres burned, 876 structures lost or damaged, and 9 fatalities (CalFire, 2022). Although the total amount of acres burned significantly dropped this past year, the 5-year average for acres burned rests at more than 2,300,000 (CalFire, 2022).  As 2022 drew to a close, the State was hit by the first of several atmospheric rivers, bringing severe winter storms, disastrous flooding, landslides, and mudslides.  This led President Biden to approve a major disaster declaration for California on January 14, 2023 (The White House, 2023).  At the time of press, there are two active disasters declared for the State, encompassing 43 of 58 counties (FEMA, 2023).

“Children represent a vulnerable group and are disproportionately impacted during times of disaster.”

While the impact of these tragedies can be felt by all walks of life, children represent a vulnerable group and are disproportionately impacted during times of disaster (Peek, 2008).  While there are many variables that influence the vulnerability of a particular child, as a whole “young people are less likely to understand the events affecting them, have less control and decision-making opportunities than adults, and often have less experience coping with highly stressful situations (SAMHSA, 2022).” Children are also more likely to experience trauma as a result of disaster because they are more likely to be severely injured and often lack knowledge of safety precautions (SAMHSA, 2022).

“The importance of equipping our youth with the skills and knowledge necessary to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters cannot be ignored.”

When confronted with such sobering information, one might be led to wonder what role, if any, might young people have when it comes to disaster preparedness and community resilience.  The answer is simple; a significant one.  With an estimated 22.4% of California's population falling under the age of 18, the importance of equipping our youth with the skills and knowledge necessary to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters cannot be ignored (US Census Bureau, 2022).  Development of these skills can lead to a number of benefits including increased resilience and decreased fear and anxiety (FEMA, 2023).   Furthermore, you people can become change agents and leaders within their families, schools, and communities – a time-tested approach rooted in the beginnings of 4-H and the Cooperative Extension System, when rural youth programs were used as a way to introduce new agricultural technologies to adults (UC ANR).  The method remains the same but instead of introducing agricultural technologies, today's young people can help introduce the concept of preparedness.  Prepared individuals build prepared communities, and a prepared community is a resilient community.

This begs the question of where to go from here.  Thankfully youth preparedness programs are gaining momentum and My Preparedness Initiative (MyPI) is one of them.  MyPI is a complete leadership and disaster preparedness curriculum aimed at teens aged 13-19.  Initially developed by the Mississippi State University Extension Service in 2013, MyPI has grown into a national program that reaches 27 states and 3 territories.  The program has three key components, which are outlined below. 

• Component A: Consists of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training. 
• Component B: Consists of a full-featured add-on catalog, where participants can complete CPR/AED certifications, focus on specialty tracks in technology and career exploration, and participate in disaster simulations.
• Component C: Consists of the Prep+6 capstone project, where participants help develop emergency supply kits and emergency communication plans for their family and six additional families or households.

After an extended delay associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic, this innovative program is now slated for implementation in California this Summer, with an Instructor Certification and Training Workshop (ICTW) scheduled for August 2-4, 2023.  The location is still to be determined, but if you would like to know more about this program or would like to become an adult MyPI Instructor, please contact Nate Caeton at nwcaeton@ucanr.edu or complete the MyPI Interest Survey.

Youth preparedness programs like MyPI are positioned to play a vital role in developing young people while addressing the ever-pressing need for increased community resilience.  If there are no programs like this in your area, you are encouraged to help establish one.  And remember, as the leader of a youth preparedness program, you are doing much more than merely supporting local preparedness efforts.  You are cultivating the next generation of leaders – leaders who can navigate adversity, effect positive change, and contribute to their communities. 

A key component for youth on their thriving pathway is cultivating a growth mindset. Youth with a strong growth mindset view challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. When young people possess a growth mindset, they are more resilient, and better able to adapt to challenging situations. Through practice and effort both youth and adults increase their potential to learn and develop across the lifespan. Watch the video on growth mindset at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73KbVR6l6bU

A key method to help young people cultivate a growth mindset is to provide constructive feedback on their completed work. In California 4-H, youth members often showcase a variety of “things made, raised, grown, or improved” at county fairs, presentation events, and other exhibit venues. At these events, youth exhibit and may receive feedback from experts. Providing venues for youth to exhibit the product of their work and receive feedback can support youth in assessing their learning and set future goals and direction. Exhibition may help support a growth mindset; a belief that intelligence, abilities and personality can grow with effort and persistence. An emphasis on growth mindset is one reason many 4-H events use a criterion-based system, aka the Danish system,  where youth are evaluated against a set standard rather than against one another.

Sometimes, the balance tilts, and youth (and parents) focus on the competitive aspects of events. In this, youth are seeking an extrinsic reward – 1st place – and trying to “win at all costs.” This emphasis serves counterproductive purposes: promoting performance goals (over learning goals), often reducing self-esteem, and potentially limiting the development of healthy relationships. Competition may reinforce a fixed mindset, a belief that talents and skills are mainly inherited, static, and cannot change much. 

The research literature is clear: in comparing learning outcomes between cooperative, competitive, and individualist work, those engaged in cooperative tasks often experience higher intrinsic motivation, use more creative thinking, have more positive attitudes towards the task, promote greater social capital, and increase general psychological health when compared with competitive or individually oriented tasks (Johnson & Johnson, 2009). [NWC1] 

 As your 4-H youth begin to show and exhibit, please remember to help them (and their parents) focus on learning and growing from their exhibition, with competition as one method to assess one's skills. Help youth use evaluators/judge's feedback to learn, improve, and grow. Praise youth when they show effort, try alternate strategies, or seek help.

References

Dweck, C.S. (2006) Mindset: The new psychology of success. Ballantine Books.

Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 365-379. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09339057

 [NWC1]Should we include the full reference alongside Dweck?

Through the Second Chance Youth Garden, young people in San Diego County provide food to their communities through a farm stand and CSA model. Photos by Diego Lynch

UC SAREP's Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems grant helps support Second Chance garden

Fifteen-year-old Xavier knows the anger within him will never leave. “I can't ever get rid of it,” he said.

“I've always wanted to just fight for no reason; I just had an anger issue, losing my temper quick with people,” added Xavier, a ninth-grader in San Diego County. “I have high expectations of myself.”

Xavier is working to keep his emotions under control, and he has found a sense of calm through his volunteer work. He was an intern – and then a peer supervisor – in the youth-run garden of Second Chance, a San Diego-based organization that works to break the cycles of poverty and incarceration by providing housing and job training to adults and young people.

The youth garden was started in 2012 by Second Chance, an organization that works to break the cycles of poverty and incarceration by providing housing and job training.

Operating their garden as a small farm business, youth in the program, ages 14 to 21, offer produce to the community through their farm stand and a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model.

“The project incorporates a ‘farm to fork' approach in which youth not only experience how to grow food, but how to cook and eat healthfully,” said Gail Feenstra, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, which has a grant program that funds research and education projects – such as the youth garden – supporting sustainable food systems.

“Second Chance works primarily with youth in communities of color, providing them with training and also helping them develop confidence in themselves,” Feenstra said.

Filling a critical need for fresh produce

Caelli Wright, program manager of the Second Chance youth garden, said that grant funds from SAREP – a program of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources – have been used to purchase the supplies needed to sustain the program. The garden has filled a critical need for produce during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Located near Encanto Elementary School, the youth-run garden has provided 10,000 pounds of produce to families at Encanto that have needed help during the pandemic.

“After the pandemic hit, we recognized the increased need for fresh food in our neighborhoods,” Wright said. “That need was already there – southeast San Diego is considered a ‘food swamp' or ‘food apartheid', if you will – and with the onset of COVID, that need just escalated with unemployment and complications in our food production systems.”

Through a partnership with UC San Diego Center for Community Health and Encanto Elementary School (located down the block from the garden), donations enabled the program to give its CSA shares to about 25 families at Encanto. Over the course of the pandemic, the youth have grown 10,000 pounds of produce to donate.

At the same time, the program helps the young participants grow. For Xavier, being outdoors with peers empowered him to develop positive relationships. Previously, as a student in a charter school program, he was not accustomed to interacting with people and groups. Volunteering in the youth garden has given him a fresh perspective and understanding of others.

“Learning to be patient with people and [to] accept sometimes that if I don't know something, I need to ask about it, because I used to be so in my ego that I thought I knew everything,” Xavier explained. “But I don't know everything – I just learned to accept some things…that's just being part of life. And that's something that the garden has helped me with, personally.”

Opportunities for personal, social growth

Young people grow valuable skills in gardening, landscaping and agriculture, while also developing their social skills in a collaborative environment.

Developing – and redeveloping – social skills are especially important for students, as they return from the disconnections associated with remote learning.

“Right now, with a lot of students facing the aftermath of COVID and being restricted to learning at home and not getting as much social interaction in their daily lives, it's led to a lot of challenges, mental health-wise, and social and emotional learning-wise,” Wright said. “The garden program provides that opportunity that some youth have been missing out on.”

In southeast San Diego, such crucial opportunities for personal growth and career exploration are harder to come by, and Second Chance started the garden in 2012 to give youth a unique work experience and valuable skills. About 400 young people have participated in the program.

“The youth that we serve are coming from low-income neighborhoods that are underserved with resources,” Wright said. “They just are not exposed to the same opportunities [as those in higher-income areas] to build skills or be ready for the workforce or to reach higher education – so that's where our program comes in and helps deliver those needed services.”

Xavier, who originally came to the garden because he heard that landscaping could be a lucrative career, recently finished his second stint as a peer supervisor in the youth garden. With his new skills, he and his cousin are looking to start a business of their own, cutting grass and doing yardwork in their community.

And, late last month, Xavier transferred to a more traditional high school environment.

“Being in a charter school after two, three years,” he said, “I've realized I miss being around more people.”

Students visiting Elkus Ranch learn about agriculture outdoors on a working farm in Half Moon Bay. Photo by Evett Kilmartin

Curious goats milled around the masked elementary school students who were raking out the livestock stalls. After a year of social distancing due to COVID-19 precautions, the goats were enthralled by the youngsters who visited UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' Elkus Ranch Environmental Education Center in San Mateo County. 

“The animals were missing kids, they're used to getting more loving,” said Beth Loof, 4-H youth community educator at Elkus Ranch. “Goats are really social. They get distressed when they are alone.”

The students cleaned livestock stalls to learn some of the responsibilities of raising livestock.

Tucked behind the rolling green hills of Half Moon Bay off state Route 1, Elkus Ranch is a working landscape that, in a normal year, hosts people from all over the San Francisco Bay Area for field trips, conferences, community service projects, internships and summer camps.

During the pandemic, UC ANR has limited visitors to “social bubbles” of children and adults for outdoor education at the 125-acre ranch, which has implemented a variety of COVID protocols for the safety of visitors. During Adventure Days, young people spend four hours caring for animals, tending gardens, making a nature-themed craft project and hiking around the property.

Students eat lunch at picnic tables. During Adventure Days, young people spend four hours caring for animals, tending gardens, making a nature-themed craft project and hiking around Elkus Ranch.

“We would love to bring children from urban areas of the Bay Area to Elkus Ranch,” said Frank McPherson, director of UC Cooperative Extension for Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco counties. “So they can learn where food comes from, before it gets to the grocery store.”

On a sunny spring day, 11 students from Share Path Academy in San Mateo visited for Adventure Day, as their first field trip of the year.

Playing with clay is one of several hands-on activities.

“Coming here and having the hands-on learning, being able to hold objects, touch objects, interact with things, it's all part of learning,” said Erin McCoy, a Share Path Academy teacher. “In science, you can talk about certain things in classes, but when you come out here and you actually apply it to what they're doing and it's tactile for them, at this age, it's really important.”

One of a pair of babydoll sheep that live at Elkus Ranch. The short sheep are used to graze weeds in vineyards and sheared for their wool.

The group – composed of McCoy, nine fifth-graders, a fourth-grader, a sixth-grader and a couple of parents – spent the day outdoors petting the donkeys, goats, chickens, rabbits and sheep and learning about the animals that live at Elkus Ranch.

“I think it's been a great opportunity for our children to be outdoors and to enjoy nature, to reconnect with the environment – animals, plants, just the outdoors,” said parent Christina Cabrera. “It's great for the children and the adults accompanying them.”

Using wool sheared from sheep that live at Elkus Ranch, students carded the wool, brushing the fibers to align the strands in the same direction. Photo by Evett Kilmartin

Inside the barn, Loof invited the students to sit on straw bales – not the hay bales, which are food for the livestock. She showed the students how wool that is sheared from sheep's coats is spun into yarn. First, they carded the wool. “You're going to card it like this. It's like brushing your hair, but it has a little resistance so it can be a workout,” Loof said, cautioning the students wearing shorts to be careful not to brush their skin with the sharp, wire teeth of the tool. “Get all the fibers nice and flat, lined up, going one way. Fibers are what we call all the strands of wool.”

After twisting the wool by hand into yarn, the students fashioned the natural-colored fuzzy strands into bracelets.

After carding the wool, the students twisted the fibers into yarn and made bracelets. Photo by Evett Kilmartin

“We love Elkus,” said McCoy, whose son has attended summer camp at the ranch. “This place is awesome.”

Taking a break for lunch, the group walked down the dirt path from the barn past the livestock pens to wash their hands, then sat at primary-colored picnic tables to eat next to a garden.

After lunch, the students exercised their creativity with buckets of clay to mold into animals or roll out and cut with cookie cutters.

In the chicken coop, Loof, who is one of four community educators who work at Elkus Ranch, shared animal science facts such as, “Eggs are viable for two weeks after the hen sits on them in the nest.” She also told funny stories such as how Dora, the white bantam, escaped the coop and ate all the chard in the garden.

“I wish this was my school,” said one student as he held an egg-laying hen.

A student feeds a chicken. Photo by Evett Kilmartin

The visit ended with a garden tour and a game of hide and seek among the raised beds of onions, squash and other vegetables.

“Being outdoors is an important counterbalance to being on a computer,” said Cabrera, who is also a San Mateo High School wellness counselor. “It's a great addition to what we're doing. Just to be with animals.”

A student gently pets a wary rabbit. Photo by Evett Kilmartin

Elkus Ranch is still offering Adventure Days for children; the cost is $425 for 10 people. Small groups are also invited for 90-minute visits.

“If all goes well, we plan to offer a three-day mini-camp Monday through Wednesday of Thanksgiving week,” said Leslie Jensen, Elkus Ranch coordinator.

For more information about Elkus Ranch activities, visit ucanr.edu/adventure or contact Jensen at LKJensen@ucanr.edu.

Students displayed the wool yarn bracelets they made.