Mower County has a strong 4-H following, and that will be evident this week, during National 4-H Week, Oct. 2 through Oct. 8.

Students across the nation will begin promoting 4-H on Sunday and throughout the week, as they will be recruiting new students, holding fun activities and volunteering in their communities. Furthermore, October is also 4-H month.

Mower County 4-H Coordinator Melissa Koch said local 4-H groups have been gathering promotional materials to distribute throughout the community.

According to a 4-H press release, recent findings from Tufts University’s 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development indicate that young people in 4-H are three times more likely to contribute to their communities than youth not participating in 4-H. Notably, the Tufts research discovered structured learning, encouragement and adult mentoring that 4-H’ers receive play a vital role in helping them actively contribute to their communities.

In Mower, a large number of 4-H’ers have been volunteering for many years.

“Mower County has been staying steady,” Koch said, and added its likely because of the many generations of 4-H’ers that have passed through the system, along with the family ties. Furthermore, she said some new students without previous 4-H ties have signed up, as well.

Now, roughly 470 students from Kindergarten to 12th grade are involved in Mower County 4-H projects, and they’ll be exploring the growing activity of geocaching this week. Students will use GPS devices to hunt for 4-H tokens.

Also during National 4-H Week, hundreds of thousands of youth from all around the nation will complete a single, innovative experiment on 4-H National Youth Science Day. Locasl 4-H’ers will complete their projects later this year; however, the nationwide project itself is very fitting for this region. The 2011 National Science Experiment, Wired for Wind, will introduce young people to the possibilities of using wind as a clean, widely available, and low-cost source of renewable energy.

Among all those activities, the Mower County 4-H chapter will hold its annual banquet in Adams on Nov. 14 for all the students’ and volunteers’ work during the year.

More info about this week’s events will be posted on the Mower County 4-H Facebook page.