4H: Leaders Building Leaders

By Joanne McDonald

Aresearch project on pulmonary surfactant, the near-magical foamy fluid that comes from a cow’s lungs and helps save the lives of premature babies, landed Niagara 4-H member Tiauna Lodewyk as a finalist in the 2020 4-H Canada Science Fair competition in Saskatchewan.

The arrival of surfactants in neonatal intensive care units in the 1980s was groundbreaking and Tiauna wanted to illustrate how agriculture and animals contribute to scientific advancements in the medical world.

Now studying at the post secondary level, Tiauna, 20, hopes to one day apply her business acumen to an agriculturerelated career.

President of the 4-H Goat Club, Tiauna is ready for the future and says she owes it to her many years in Niagara 4-H clubs and specifically to longtime leader Ann Marie Chechalk.

“Mrs. Chechalk, and her family, have been such an amazing part of my 4-H experience. She is so giving and really

Continued From Page 13 took us kids under her wing in our early years for learning about goats and getting into the agriculture world. She is always giving her time and talents to the 4-H community and has been such a blessing to our whole family.”

As a well-known journalist, Ann Marie has been telling the stories of farming and rural communities for more than 20 years, writing for the Niagara Farmers’ Monthly newspaper.

As a well-loved 4-H leader, she has been turning hundreds of youth into well rounded adults for more than 35 years. And through those years, youth coming through the programs haven’t changed one bit.

“4-H has the nicest kids in their clubs.

They’re committed, they’re interested in learning, they’re friendly. Some are shy but 4-H changes them. They are able to stand up in front of a group, to show in front of a crowd, and help out at meetings.”

“I really like the kids. I like the farm families I meet.” And it’s evident through the many clubs she has led, from goats and explorers, to cooking, sewing and scrapbooking.

It’s a rewarding and wholesome experience, and young people thrive with the learning by doing, team building, healthy competition, supporting each other, showing at the fairs and opportunities for scholarships.

“When kids go for job interviews and say they’re involved in 4-H they stand out from the crowd.”

L.E.A.D. SCHOLARSHIP

Tiauna is not the only Lodewyk who has been part of Ann Marie’s 4-H family. She’s one of six siblings and they’ve all been in 4-H.

“The best part of 4-H is Ann Marie. She’s the reason we keep coming back,” says Tiauna’s mom Trish Lodewyk. “The whole Chechalk family has the most generous people. They exemplify community service.”

Continued From Page 14

Josiah Lodewyk was the recipient of 4-H Canada’s most prestigious annual scholarship in 2019 - the $20,000 L.E.A.D. award (Leadership Excellence Awards of Distinction). The award honours youth who have become exceptional leaders through their 4-H experience, and who share the best of themselves with their communities.

He too spent his formative years in 4-H clubs and said it was Ann Marie who initially convinced the family they could handle a couple of goats.

“Mrs. Chechalk was instrumental in exposing us to the agricultural community and the incredible diversity within that community,” Josiah said. “She would take us on tours to different farms where we saw cutting edge agricultural tech- niques.” They were experiences that fed his interest in agricultural systems.

“It was through those field trips that I could discover and develop my passion for applying technology to the agricultural field.”

“4-H has been instrumental in helping pay for my university,” said Josiah, now finishing year four of five in the Systems Design Engineering Program at the University of Waterloo.

“We’ve been blessed by Mrs. Chechalk. She is an incredibly joyful person and has the biggest heart,” said Josiah.

Josiah has landed a summer coop working for a start up company that is modifying rice to grow in salt water and he is helping to develop the floating farms.

“4-H really has been instrumental in

Continued From Page 15 designing my future,” Josiah said. LEARN BY

Doing

The highlights are too many to recollect, but Ann Marie pulls a few from her store of 4-H memories.

The annual West Niagara Fair is a local culmination of the work done by all the clubs throughout the year – training, clipping, learning the body parts and how to judge. They all show on Friday, a top showperson from each club is chosen, and from there, a grand champion is named. If a competitor wins for the goat club for example, they can’t win again unless it’s with a different breed.

It’s happened only twice – 4H member Kristin Hoffman showed a beef calf and a horse and won two Grand Champion Showperson titles during a weekend at the West Niagara Fair. Andrew Chechalk capped the same double win showing a goat and a beef calf.

Niagara 4-H Goat Club leader Tiauna Lodewyk was a finalist in the 2020 4-H Canada Science Fair competition in Saskatchewan with her research project on pulmonary surfactant.

And now Andrew is a 4-H Goat Club leader and Kristin has just signed on as a Beef Club leader.

One year at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, two members from the Niagara 4-H Goat Club won Grand Champion Showperson and Reserve Champion Showperson.

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4-H ARBOR AWARD

It’s hard to pin Ann Marie down for an interview. Not the least because she is modest, but to call her busy is an understatement. Newspaper deadlines are looming, the 4-H travelling food booth has to be ready for a weekend event, there’s 4-H meetings to plan. And there’s that neatly organized stack of scrapbooks on the dining room table, archives of Niagara’s 4-H history (news articles written mainly by her) waiting to be completed – someday.

Ann Marie says her own kids always remind her they had grand moments too but she doesn’t remember them. “That’s my life in nutshell.”

Ann Marie represents the essence of volunteering and in 2018 she was one of three recipients to receive 4-H Ontario’s most prestigious volunteer award – the 4-H Ontario Arbor Award. She was celebrated for her leadership, initiative and many years of engaging youth in becoming leaders.

Ann Marie may have originally been a city girl, but she has lived on a dairy goat farm for 40 years.

She recalls the knock on the door from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. The OMAFRA rep was Gordon Mitchell and he asked Ann Marie and her sister-in-law Joann Chechalk if they would like to lead the 4-H Goat Club. She recalls they said, “Sure, what is 4-H?” That was the start and the rest is history.

On the family farm, “we milked goats for 25 years and sent the milk to Hewitt’s Dairy. When we retired we had been the longest shipper in Ontario.”

Leaders Building Leaders

Niagara 4-H originally started with rural youth but now there are members from towns and cities and they don’t even have to take their goats home.

Joanne Battersby and Jonathan Dugdale allow members to come to their farm, choose a kid and train it for the summer.

4-H is open to all youth, ages 9-21 years whether they are from the city, a rural community or a farm. The ‘Learn to Do By Doing’ approach gives them a place where they can be involved, accepted, valued and heard while developing valuable leadership and life skills. There are also provincial camps, conferences, competitions and national and international travel opportunities available.

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