scabs and rats of new york city
Public Relations Plan Sample County 4-H Public Relations Plan By Ami Neiberger, APR State 4-H Public Relations & Communication Coordinator UF/IFAS 4-H Youth Development Office Situation: You are a new 4-H agent entering a county where the 4-H program has been without an agent or program assistant for a long time. You have one secretary in your office to help you with all of your reports, meetings, enrollments, mailings, and more. There are only a couple of clubs functioning —one in livestock and the other in environmental education. Your extension director and district director both want for you to revitalize the 4-H club program and the school enrichment program. You are new to the community and don’t know anyone yet, other than your landlord and the customer service representatives at the electric and phone companies. Research: You don’t have any money so you can’t hire someone to do research for you, but you can gather some observations from key groups in the community. So you draw up a list of ques-tions you want to answer and draft your secretary to help take notes and write down responses. Questions include: what do you know about 4-H? What do you know about 4-H activities in our county? Why are you involved in 4-H (if you are), or why not? What are the key issues for children and teens in our community? How can 4-H address these needs? Why do people join groups like scouts or other community organizations? Would people join 4-H for the same reasons? You’ll need to find out certain information about the research participants, so you do a short questionnaire for each person to fill out which includes their age, profession, where they live, volunteer activities they are involved in already, what they think 4-H is, what they think 4-H does in the community, and what 4-H activities are available in their community. You also lead an open discussion with them about 4-H and some of these questions listed above. You round up some parents and other adults through two local churches (one is a minority congregation) and you do 2 focus groups with 10 people each to find out what people think of 4-H in the community. You do two focus groups with youth separately. You individually interview the city manager, two members of the county commission, and your County Extension Director to find out more about how people in the community perceive 4-H. You also do individual interviews with the chief of police, the editor of the local weekly newspaper, two school principals and the elementary school PTA president. You also interview the two 4-H club leaders you have when they stop by your office to meet you. You also do interviews with their clubs. (Note: many of these research interviews also serve to introduce you to many of the key people in the community). Research Results: You determine that while 85% of adults in the community that you inter-viewed know what 4-H is, only 10% can identify any of the programs 4-H actually does in the community. Youth in the focus groups talk about 4-H being for kids who live on farms and raise animals. About half of the teens said that it was “not cool” to belong to 4-H. Parents say that the key issues for young people in the community are not having enough stuff to do that is positive. The town was recently scandalized by a Rave bust where police found teens using the drug ecstasy. The Rave bust and some recent juvenile crimes have shaken parents’ belief that the community is safe. Teens and middle schoolers say that adults make too many rules—the high school recently imposed a closed campus policy and there is serious debate in the community about teen curfews and the local school dress code policy. One of the minority parents writes on her survey about a controversial decision in a 4-H public speaking contest 10 years ago that she feels slighted a minority child. The newspaper editor says he sends a reporter to the fair every year and covers the 4-H swine show. Other than that, he knows little about 4-H and does not see it as relevant to his readers today, beyond a few “cute” pictures of kids with animals.