Harry Steven Dasher

After earning his bachelor's degree in animal science and a secondary teaching credential at UC Davis, Dasher began his career teaching high school vocational agriculture for five years on a reservation for Native Americans in Mendocino County.

In 1980, Dasher, who raised farm animals as a boy in 4-H, joined UC Cooperative Extension as the 4-H advisor for Contra Costa County, then for Placer and Nevada counties in 1983. In 1990, he transferred to San Diego County, where he served as a 4-H youth advisor until he retired in 2011.

“He represented the best of old 4-H values and new traits we needed – tolerance and inclusion,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, emeritus UC Cooperative Extension advisor, who worked with Dasher when she was the 4-H advisor in Ventura County. “Just a really humorous – but pointed in his humor – wonderful person with lots of common sense.” 

While San Diego County had a very strong community club program, Dasher created new models for 4-H to extend youth development to communities of diverse cultures, reaching out to Hispanic, African American, Islamic and Native American children.

In urban neighborhoods, Dasher partnered with the San Diego County 4-H Youth Education Foundation, which funded afterschool programs. He used the afterschool sites to conduct applied research projects and pilot UCCE curriculum. Dasher worked with the San Diego County Office of Education Migrant Education to create leadership clubs of migrant teens in afterschool settings. He received federal funding in 2009 to launch an afterschool program in the most economically depressed part of the county, exposing San Diego County youth to 4-H science literacy curriculum and opportunities to interact with positive, older role models.

Dasher made it a point to elevate the county's 4-H volunteers to the level of “middle management,” where they could feel a greater sense of ownership and responsibility. He provided 4-H volunteers with training, organization and evaluation programs.

“The strategy was to develop a self-sustaining volunteer corps to operate an experiential-based educational program for youth,” he said in 2011.

Over the years, Dasher focused his work on adolescent issues, science literacy and volunteer development. Dasher and several local partners received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the state Office of Criminal Justice and Juvenile Delinquency Prevention to develop community-based collaboratives that address adolescent issues.

The project aimed to develop assets in youth. They established three youth centers, safe places where adolescents could interact with caring adults and access resources that gave them the capacity to contribute to the community. Many of the youth attended state 4-H leadership conferences in Sacramento.

The program received a second $500,000 grant for another three years to extend the programs to different age groups, and, in time, the programs became permanent to address youth and family issues in San Diego County.

Because of his work on the youth center project, Dasher was recruited by Cal State San Marcos to participate in a specialized graduate program in sociology. For his master's research, he studied volunteer roles in mentoring.

Later in his career, Dasher became active in administration of the 4-H Youth Development program at the statewide level.

“His good nature and intelligence added a wonderful component to those of us who partnered in the swath of counties that started in Solano across to the more mountainous counties of Placer-Nevada and El Dorado,” said Diane Metz, emeritus nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor in Solano and Yolo counties.

After he retired, Dasher started a small sheep ranch in San Diego and maintained close ties to 4-H.

Dasher is survived by his husband, Robert Treat. 

Read more about Dasher's career at https://ucanr.edu/news/?uid=1403&ds=191.