Iron County 4-H uses grants to offer programs throughout summer

HURLEY — With a summer schedule full of activities for the younger residents of Iron County, the 4-H program continues to seek ways to fund the various activities it offers.

While Neil Klemme, the youth development agent with the University of Wisconsin’s Iron County Extension Office, said while almost two-thirds of the funding for the popular 4-H summer camps comes from community donations, he recently obtained $10,500 in grant funding to help expand the programs offered.

Klemme used a $500 healthy programming grant through the UW-Madison campus to purchase four backpacks and four CamelBaks — a hydration pack that is worn like a backpack and has a tube running to a wearer’s mouth to allow them to hydrate without stopping their outdoor activity — that can be used for hiking and camping trips.

Klemme also received two $5,000 innovative programming grants from the UW extension system’s regional office.

One of the grants will fund a “youth first impression survey,” which Klemme explained was a survey where young people from Mercer and Hurley visit similarly sized towns elsewhere in Wisconsin and record their impressions while youth from those towns visit Iron County.

“There has been a first impression survey out there for about 15 years now, where adults visit each other’s communities and fill out a survey and do an assessment of each other’s towns,” said Klemme. “I’m re-creating the survey to be done with teenagers. ... In 2013 we took a group and did a survey with teenagers and since then, we’ve re-created the survey to be more youth friendly.”

Klemme hopes that the surveys can be tied into some of the re-branding and survey efforts that the Hurley Chamber of Commerce is participating in.

Klemme also got a second $5,000 grant to purchase equipment that can be used throughout the year; $2,500 of that grant was used to purchase tents, coolers and other necessary camping equipment that Klemme is using to start up the 4-H outpost camp, a new summer camp for sixth and seventh graders that 4-H is offering this year.

The remaining $2,500 is being used to purchase skis for the Hurley K-12 school district so that the district can expand its skiing program through the eighth grade.

“I want kids around here to get outside, especially in the winter, to get out and do something physical,” said Klemme, explaining his reasoning for applying for the grant. “I think it’s awesome that the school is starting to do this cross country ski program now.”

The $10,000 in grants came through a program the UW Extension regional office runs where it uses money saved from the salary costs of unfilled positions to fund programs rather than rolling the savings back into the budget, Klemme said.

“Instead of rolling it up and losing it, they pile it up and at the end of the year they give people money for doing innovative and cool programming,” said Klemme.

This year, the program had approximately $40,000 in grants available, including the $10,000 that Iron County received.