The 4-H Horse Club Resilience Project

Asking: What does resilience look like to participants? What other life skills do they acquire? What facilitates these outcomes?
Participants  across Ontario filled in surveys, interviewed, and provided visual data to tell their story.
Findings show 4-H as Green Care, therapeutic recreation, farm-space outdoor experiential learning, and sport for positive youth development. 
​Conclusions make some practical recommendations for youth program design.


The final research thesis is now available! Download it at: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/handle/10214/13965
ABSTRACT: 
(copied directly from Sansom, H. (2018). Rural Recreation for Resilience: Youth Development and Life Skill Outcomes in 4-H Ontario Horse Clubs- Application of a resilience and rural lens to physical activity for psycho-social wellbeing. [PhD Thesis, University of Guelph, pp ii-iii] )
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Canada has widely acknowledged deficits in population physical and mental health, especially for marginalised populations such as those in rural areas. Low scores on youth wellbeing create a need for new options to promote physical activity and psycho-social skill development.  While there are lower health indicators for rural areas, they are rich in assets for contextually relevant physical recreation and youth development activities.  Equine activity, that is an Olympic sport, leisure activity, and physical and mental health therapy, is one such option.
This study examined resilience and other life skills through participation in 4‑H horse clubs.  4-H is an international youth development organization that has been in Canada for over 100 years.  Arising at the same time as Scouts and other established youth development organizations, 4-H was uniquely dedicated to the needs of rural communities.  Today clubs are in urban and rural areas, with a variety of topics.  They are community-based, low-cost, and often inclusive of persons with different abilities.  Horse clubs were targeted because of the wealth of literature available on therapeutic equine activity, and because of 4‑H’s unique use of this form of physical recreation within a positive youth development framework. 
The study used a three-phase, mixed-method approach within a resilience lens: 1) an online survey to all horse club members (536, n = 56) and leaders (105, n = 4) across Ontario incorporating the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28) and Schwarzer and Jerusalem Self-Efficacy Scales; 2) key informant interviews (n = 10); and 3) group youth interviews with image elicitation (5 clubs, n = 30).  Youth with different needs due to disability, cognitive ability, family situation, social status or other risk factors were included.  Findings indicated high levels of resilience resources. 
Participants described resilience, together with other outcomes such as confidence and transferrable social and workforce skills.  They also discussed processes that they felt facilitated these benefits.  Findings are relevant to sport for positive youth development, therapeutic recreation, animal and nature-based programming, equine programming specifically, and to rural community development. 




Earlier Research Project Updates:
Feb., 2017: Research project update- some preliminary results and project summary

Article "Resilience Research' in Leadership in Action, 4-H, volume 16, issue 2, page 12.
4-h_resilience_research_update_summer_2016.jpg

Other Documents:
Canadian Mental Health Association, Mental Health for All Conference presentation abstract

Conference Presentations: Rural Revitalization Foundation Rural Futures Conference Presentation (Guelph, ON) 2016/10 and Equine Futures (Stockholm, Sweden) 2016 /10

Conference Presentation Poster: Sport for Resilience: Exploring Green Physical Activity as a Culturally Relevant Vehicle for Fostering Rural Youth Resilience
2017_02_4-h_resilienceresearchupdate.pdf
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2016_10_resilience_with_equine-based_community_youth_programs_hsansom_v4.pdf
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sport_for_resilience_cmha_poster-_hsansom_2016_09_v3.pdf
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cmha_mental_health_for_all_abstract_2016_09.pdf
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4-H Resilience Research

Research shows that physical activity and nature experience such as farm experience can be very powerful for developing transferable youth life skills- particularly when the activity is conducted within a youth development program such as 4-H.  Kids have an environment to discover their strengths, learn healthy life habits, and become employable people. Plus, unique programs like 4-H give kids in urban contexts an opportunity to discover a liking for agricultural work or appreciation for agriculture and environmental issues.

Rural areas in Canada are challenged strongly.  The need for entrepreneurial and other workforce diversity, as well as improved wellbeing in rural communities is a serious concern.

In challenging and changing economic times, resilience is an especially important life-skill for youth in rural communities.  Resilience elements studied in this project (such as self-efficacy) are important precursors to adult thriving skills such as entrepreneurship, innovation, civic engagement, and choice for healthy living.  Not all parents can teach these skills. Youth programs give a chance to all kids regardless of their home situation, to be in an environment where they can learn these skills and be encouraged to find their strengths so they can be positive contributors to community, country and the economy.

This research project is based on existing research in sport and animal and nature based activity as vehicles for psycho-social and emotional development.  This project seeks to fill in important gaps of understanding around what types of life-skill benefits are linked to what types of activity, and how these life-skills actually develop.  Such data gaps influence funders, who are more and more concerned about having solid information to back up funding decisions.

In partnership with 4-H Ontario, this project asked: How can 4-H contribute to resilience needs for rural residents?

In this exciting project, data was collected about links between participation in 4-H, and resilience in youth.  Other data emerged about life skills learned, as well as processes which facilitated all these outcomes.  Attending a program doesn't guarantee youth development or resilience. It's what's happening that facilitates these outcomes that is important.

The research focused on 4-H horse club members because of all the information available about the effectiveness of equine-activity for therapy and personal development. The data were used to help research and program planning for using outdoor and physical recreation, farm and equine activity specifically to facilitate resilience and other life skills. 

The data are also used to help 4-H evaluate and continuously improve programs.  

The research was conducted by Heather Sansom, PhD, as part of her degree fulfillment at the University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development.

This research was supported by 4-H Ontario, Mitacs, the University of Guelph, and private/community funding.

Reaching the Goal Together!
We had a unique fund matching opportunity.
We needed to raise a minimum of $7,500 to qualify for a dollar-for-dollar fund matching.  Together, we made it!

Click the document below to view conference poster "Sport for Resilience" about this project.

4-H: a power smoothie blending contextually relevant physical activity, community connection, adult mentorship, positive-youth-development framework, nature experience and animal and social interaction to help youth develop life, leadership and workforce skills.