By Marcus Eason
Summer vacations are unfortunately over, school has begun, and 4-H activities have kicked off! It’s time to begin 4-H judging teams and project clubs, but also very soon begin on Project Achievement presentations. So, what is Project Achievement? Georgia 4-H Project Achievement empowers young people with skills for a lifetime. Students choose a project area of interest, research the topic, and write and present a presentation. Youth develop leadership, creativity, public speaking, record keeping, and other skills. As students become older, a record keeping component that promotes independent thinking, research and implementation is added. 4-H’ers begin competition in their school or county and advance to the district and state levels.
Project Achievement is supposed to be a fun process as 4-H’ers are to pick a presentation topic of their choice. They can talk about their hobbies, sports they play, their pets or even their last vacation to the ocean and what they saw. Some examples of Project Achievement competition categories are: Arts, Beef, Cat Care, Dog Care, Computer Information Technology, Current People, Places, & Events, Dairy, Entomology, Forestry, Fish, Health, Herpetology, Historic People, Horse, Marine Ecology, Paleontology, Performing Arts, Poultry, Swine, Sheep & Goats, Sports, Target Sports, Veterinary Science, and Wildlife just to name a few. After topics are chosen, 4-H’ers spend time researching their topic to develop an 8 or so minute speech filled with lots of information and interesting facts. Visual aids are a must! Youth use their creativeness to design and create visual aid posters to accompany their speech.
Yes, Project Achievement takes some work and dedication but in turn 4-H’ers feel a since of accomplishment and pride in their presentation and no matter what place they earn, youth always have their sights on how they can do better next year. And they always have a blast spending the day or the entire weekend at Rock Eagle 4-H Center with their friends.
Cloverleaf DPA (4-6 grades) will be held at Rock Eagle on November 22, 2025. Junior/Senior DPA (7-12 grades) will be held at Rock Eagle on March 6-8, 2026. However, Recordbooks are due in January.
If your child is interested in participating in Project Achievement please contact Marcus Eason, Oglethorpe County 4-H Agent at (706)743-8341.
