Sport-for-resilience: 4-H participation and youth lifeskill development

The current wellbeing crisis in Canada is magnified in rural areas. Also, rural economies are negatively affected by lack of suitable youth lifeskill training. Rural communities lack financial capital to address these issues on their own. 4-H has been building rural youth skill for over 100 years, offering a variety of options, including physical activities which occur on farms such as horse activity. For rural youth, there is potential for 4-H physical activity programs to be sport-for-development- a field combining physical activity and lifeskill development. However, over the years there has been very little research on rural youth development, or 4-H in Canada. As a result, there is a lack of data which can be used in evaluation and program design. This project would help fill the gap by gathering information about resilience and the program elements that contribute to it the most, among 4-H Ontario horse club members.

Faculty Supervisor:

Harry Cummings

Student:

Heather Sansom

Partner:

4-H Ontario

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

University of Guelph