In the News

Teens Take Part in Creating Leaders for Tomorrow

LCORT is a program organized by staff and volunteers from the South Central Section of the California 4-H Youth Development program. The University of California 4-H Youth Development Program provides a wide variety of enrichment activities with the ultimate goal of giving youth the skills they need to thrive and succeed throughout their lives.

Conference Coordinator, Pauline Smoke, describes LCORT as “A leadership conference targeted at middle school 4-H members with workshops provided by high school aged leadership teams from the 12 counties in the South Central Section.”

Smoke explains the program goals are to teach youth leadership skills they can bring back to their communities and to help youth establish a network of personal relationships beyond the club level of the 4-H program.

Each conference delegate is assigned to a workshop group which attends presentations in a specific sequential order.  The workshops are facilitated by leadership teams sent from each county in the section.

Workshop topics are chosen months prior to the conference and teams create a 30 minute session which they present 12 times during the conference. Workshop topics included cyber-bullying awareness, team building, goal setting, individuality and more.

 Tanner Newton (16), a 7 year veteran of LCORT, attended this year’s conference as part of the presenting leadership team from Santa Cruz County.  Newton’s leadership team presented a workshop on Goal Setting and Goal Orientation.

“It taught kids the difference between attainable and non-attainable goals and how to realize the progression and completion of their goals.” Newton stated.

First time attendee Isabella Pulido, a 7^th grader from San Benito County says she came to LCORT to get the experience. “It’s mostly about learning about leadership, about being a good leader,” she said.

Austin Pitts (16) of Fresno County has been attending LCORT for the past 5 years and served as the 2012 Youth Conference Chair. He chose this year’s conference theme, “Reeling in Success.” “I like fishing,” he comments “I was fishing one day and it came to me, you know, you have to catch success and then reel it in.” 

361 members and volunteers representing Fresno, Kings, Kern, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, Stanislaus, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Tulare and Tuolumne counties attended conference this year. 

4-H members from 7-9^thgrade can attend as delegates, and later can come back as part of a leadership team.

More information about the conference can be found at the California State 4-H website,

http://www.ca4h.org/Resources/Volunteers/Councils/Sectional/South_Central/LCORT/.