Greetings!

We have really had an exciting and busy fall already and we have just had our first meeting for the 2005-6 year.

Previously there was the wrap up process for the 4-H fair: and our information booth committee has filed a report that is included in this newsletter; Virginia Cooperative Extension Leadership Council staged an expo in the government center which I attended and provided a testimonial to 4-H some the text of which I’ve included here and also achievement night hosted by our new agent Tameka Logan was a big success and we’ll recap our awards in this newsletter also.

Association Information Booth at the
Fairfax County 4-H Fair

Report from Information Booth for 2005 Fairfax 4-H Fair

The 2005 4-H Fair took place Saturday and Sunday, August 6-7 at Frying Pan Park in Herndon. The Information Booth was set up in the usual location next to the main path from the parking area. We shared a large tent with three 4-H clubs who had club exhibits. Overall, the booth was very successful and we were pleased with the traffic. Though there was a threat of rain, the weather turned out to be great!

We would like to thank the Fair Board members and others who assisted the Fairfax 4-H Association in staffing the Information Booth:

Association Members : Kendra King Bowes, Kelli Ludlum, Matt Schertz, Marc Cohen

Other volunteers:  Margaret Gooding Silverwood, Samantha Nagurny, Margaret Aiello, Nadia Ghosen, David Leedy, and Linda Philpott (who was visiting from Florida!)

We had ample space for the Information Booth materials. We used 11 tables, including those for the club exhibits. There were numerous flyers and brochures in the booth along with the fair schedule of events. The most popular were the Fairfax County 4-H brochure and the club list. We also had 4-H Association magnets giving the URL for our new association website: www.Fairfax4hFriends.org

Doris Carpenter loaned items from her 4-H memorabilia collection again for display in our booth. We appreciate her continued support. 

We encourage more club exhibits at the fair. It was nice for prospective members to pick up information about 4-H and be able to meet 4-Hers in the same tent. Only two club exhibits were staffed this year. 

The Fair Board must print new passports for the 2006 fair since we ran out this year. We also suggest adding a new giveaway item. Numerous kids mentioned they already have several of the party beads and tattoos. The association’s fuzzy bear stickers were a favorite too. 

It was extremely helpful to have Linda Philpott in the booth because she was able to answer many programming questions. We would like an active leader or knowledgeable parent helping in the booth at all times to assist with detailed 4-H program inquiries.

It was also helpful for us to use the county van on Saturday evening to store some materials from the Info Booth because different people opened on Sunday morning. We hope the van will be available next year too. 

The fair was the first big event for our new 4-H Agent, Tameka Logan, and her chance the see the 4-Hers, leaders and volunteers in action. Ruth LaCroix served as the fair coordinator from extension staff, taking care of the myriad details necessary to run this event.  

We look forward to another successful fair in August 2006. This will be possible with continued support from the Association volunteers. So, please plan to respond when we ask for help.

- Kelly Cohen, Susan Shelton, Kellie Bray, and Lori Pederson -  4-H Association Fair Committee

Achievement Night 

At this event we present two awards; one is our Spirit Award, which we present to the person, or persons who exemplify 4-H goals and ideals and the other is our Achievement or Appreciation Award that we try to give to a current 4-H member who has demonstrated exceptional leadership or accomplishments in the previous year or honor someone who has done something extra special for 4-H.

This year our appreciation award went to Kelly Cohen. As you can see from the previous report, she played a large role in the success of the Information booth this year. She also has maintained our data bases with member and alumni addresses and has been a volunteer judge on many occasions. Last year she chaired our alumni social.

New Business:

Things we need to focus on at our first meeting of this year….

Officer Elections   

On a ballot we’ll list our current officers and nominations for any of those positions.  There will also be a place to write-in candidate names in case we have some nominations from the floor.

Linda Philpot, Susan Shelton and myself have been working as a nominating committee in the last month or so. We have called people who are members to see if they would be interested in serving on the board. There will be no arm- twisting at the meeting since we’ve already done that by phone (just kidding). All registered members who are at the meeting will be eligible to vote.

In a related vein, there are also a couple of  by-law  items that we would like to discuss and we also need to pencil in our meeting schedule for the rest of the year.

Committees

   Over the last few years we have had several committees dealing with our interests and generally the business that we do. I’ll list some of them here so you can get a general idea. Maybe one of these would be  of interest to you. They include but are not limited to:

Alumni Coordinator
Alumni Social
Archive Committee
Information Booth at the Fair
Marketing Committee
Membership Chairperson
Newsletter Editor
4-H Program Committee

We hope to see some new faces…