Understanding Deployment
This project is more than assembling backpacks. Through a series of hands-on activities such as the one pictured here, the young people who assemble the packs learn about the stresses faced by military youth when their parent is deployed.
Program Coordinator Dona Leonhard (top left) leads 4-H Ambassadors in the "Blanket Community" activity, which raises awareness of what happens when National Guard and Reserve service members are deployed and leave their families and communities. This activity and others are included in the Hero Pack Lesson Plan (pdf) that is used when youth assemble Hero Packs with their club. The lesson plan was created as a class project by Dona Leonhard, Janel Digby, and Jessica Rice, students in Dr. Theresa Ferrari's Youth Program Management class during the 2005 spring quarter. Ferrari is also Ohio's 4-H Miltiary Liaison and project director for Operation: Military Kids.
