2024 Virginia 4-H Dominican Republic Program (Group 1 - July 16-23, 2024)

 What is this program?

The goal for this program is to give Virginia 4-H High School students an opportunity to travel to a Spanish speaking, developing country to interact with their peers. While there for a week, the 4-H'ers work with local Dominican teen partners to conduct an environmental 4-H Day Camp for Dominican children, learn about Dominican culture and food and conduct at least one service project in the local community.

We offer this 4-H program in partnership with the Grupo PuntaCana Foundation, Center for Sustainability and Biodiversity, of which Virginia Tech is a research partner. We began this grass roots program in 2006.  During 2007, it received the National World Citizenship in 4-H Youth Development Award from the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents.  The current program is in its 16th year, with trip leaders Carol Nansel and Christine Hodges.  Due to the pandemic, the program was suspended in 2020, 2021 and 2022.  We had such a large turnout in 2023, that we expanded the program into 2 separate weeks for 2024 to accommodate more 4-H'ers from around Virginia.    

Our first group of 2024 is traveling from July 16-23 and includes 13 teens and 4 adults in the delegation:

      4-H Teens

4 from Alleghany

5 from Highland

2 from Augusta

1 from Albemarle

1 from Prince William

    Extension Agents, 4-H

Carol Nansel, Shenandoah

Christine Hodges, Alleghany

Ben Hindman, Highland

Emmalee Edwards, Augusta

We hope you will enjoy the group blog that we are publishing during our trip.