Teaching Generosity: How 4H youth turn the holiday season into a time of service

Published 1:09 am Monday, December 29, 2025

“I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living….” Every meeting for 4-H members across the country begins with these familiar words, helping them connect to the values that nurture their growth as young leaders. The phrase “my hands to larger service” goes beyond mere words; it acts as a call to action and a reminder that genuine leadership begins with generosity, compassion, and a readiness to serve others.

The holiday season provides a meaningful opportunity to teach young people the value of generosity. Across the country, 4-H highlights that generosity is a key component of positive youth development, alongside belonging, mastery, and independence. Each element is crucial in fostering confident and compassionate young people. The University of Georgia Extension has long emphasized that learning about generosity helps youth understand how to give back to their communities in meaningful ways, and that 4-H members are committed to improving their “club, community, country, and world.” Research from Tufts University reinforces this message, stating that 4-H youth are four times more likely to make positive contributions to their communities than their peers. During the holiday season, acts of giving, such as volunteering, making cards for seniors, or collecting winter clothing, highlight generosity and help young people develop empathy, leadership, and resilience by teaching them to look beyond themselves. These experiences strengthen communities while instilling confidence and responsibility in youth.

This season is an ideal time to promote generosity. Communities recognize more needs, families are more open to giving, and young people participate in acts of kindness. The holidays emphasize service naturally, and volunteering encourages youth to develop lifelong giving habits. When young people serve together with neighbors, local leaders, and peers, they form meaningful community bonds. These shared experiences foster a sense of belonging and purpose, helping youth see themselves as important members of their community.

Generosity in 4-H isn’t limited to the holidays. It’s a year-round practice that encourages youth to give their time, talents, and energy to meaningful causes. Still, the holiday season provides a unique opportunity to emphasize and celebrate this vital aspect of positive youth development and foster lifelong habits. Ultimately, teaching youth to give during the holidays is more than just a festive activity; it’s an investment in the future. When young people see that generosity can be shown through simple acts of kindness or larger service projects, they carry those lessons into adulthood. The season becomes not just a time of receiving, but a time of shaping caring leaders who will continue to serve and engage their communities.

Meghan Corvin is the County Extension Coordinator and 4-H Youth Development Agent for the University of Georgia Extension, Whitfield County. Contact her at 706.278.8207 or meghan.corvin@uga.edu.

Jim was born Oct. 6, 1958, to Anthony and Margaret Oleksa Hanigosky. He was a lifelong member of St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Youngstown, where he was very active and giving of his time in the maintenance of church properties. Whether at church or with friends and family, Jim was known to put others’ needs first, selflessly offering his support or efforts in any way he could.

Jim worked for over 30 years at Northside Hospital in Youngstown in various capacities, where he was well-respected by his coworkers.

Jim was a dependable father, brother, uncle and friend, with a characteristic sense of humor and wit that brought laughter wherever he went. He approached life with creativity, ingenuity and humility, particularly in his love of woodworking and furniture restoration. He was passionate about sports, from rooting for his favorite Ohio State Buckeyes and Cleveland professional teams to playing and instilling a love of baseball in young people. In his youth, Jim excelled in baseball and basketball, and in his adulthood, he enjoyed playing and coaching baseball and softball leagues with friends.

To cherish his memory forever, Jim leaves his brother, John Hanigosky, and sister-in-law, Becky Hanigosky; his sister, Susan Hanigosky-Teter, and brother-in-law, Rick Teter; his daughter, Taylor Hanigosky; his “brother from another mother,” Willie Rosa, and his wife, Delia Rosa; his niece, Christine (Andrew) Kitchens; his nephew, John Hanigosky Jr.; and great-niece and nephews, Katie, James and Joshua; along with countless cousins, relatives and friends.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents.

Family and friends may gather to pay respects 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church, 356 S. Belle Vista Ave., Youngstown, where a funeral liturgy will take place at 11 a.m.

Interment will follow at St. Mary’s Parish Cemetery in Youngstown.

In lieu of flowers, Jim’s family suggests memorial contributions be made to St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Kinnick Funeral Home in Girard. Visit kinnickfuneralhome.com to send condolences to Jim’s family.

This photo shows a completed Montana Standard crossword sitting on a chair in Colleen Elliott’s home on Oct. 18 in Butte, Mont. Colleen Elliott via AP

The sun would rise over the Rockies in Butte, Mont., and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school.

She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab “Calvin and Hobbes” or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard’s pages made the achievement feel more real. Robin became an artist with a one-woman show at a downtown gallery and the front-page article went on the fridge, too. Five years later, the yellowing article is still there.

The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year.

That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper’s presence in our lives — not just in terms of the information printed upon it, but in its identity as a physical object with many other uses.

“You can pass it on. You can keep it. And then, of course, there’s all the fun things,” says Diane DeBlois, one of the founders of the Ephemera Society of America, a group of scholars, researchers, dealers and collectors who focus on what they call “precious primary source information.”

“Newspapers wrapped fish. They washed windows. They appeared in outhouses,” she says. “And — free toilet paper.”

The downward lurch in the media business has changed American democracy over the last two decades — some think for better, many for worse. What’s indisputable: The gradual dwindling of the printed paper — the item that so many millions read to inform themselves and then repurposed into household workflows — has quietly altered the texture of daily life.

American democracy and pet cages

People used to catch up on the world, then save their precious memories, protect their floors and furniture, wrap gifts, line pet cages and light fires. In Butte, in San Antonio, Texas, in much of New Jersey and worldwide, lives without the printed paper are just a tiny bit different.

For newspaper publishers, the expense of printing is just too high in an industry that’s under strain in an online society. For ordinary people, the physical paper is joining the pay phone, the cassette tape, the answering machine, the bank check, the sound of the internal combustion engine and the ivory-white pair of women’s gloves as objects whose disappearance marks the passage of time.

“Very hard to see it while it’s happening, much easier to see things like that in even modest retrospect,” says Marilyn Nissenson, co-author of “Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana.” “Young women were going to work and they wore them for a while and then one day they looked at them and thought, ‘This is ludicrous.’ That was a small but telling icon for a much larger social change.”

Nick Mathews thinks a lot about newspapers. Both of his parents worked at the Pekin (Illinois) Daily Times. He went on to become sports editor of the Houston Chronicle and, now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.

“I have fond memories of my parents using newspapers to wrap presents,” he says. “In my family, you always knew that the gift was from my parents because of what it was wrapped in.”

In Houston, he recently recalled, the Chronicle reliably sold out when the Astros, Rockets or Texas won a championship because so many people wanted the paper as a keepsake.

Four years ago, Mathews interviewed 19 people in Caroline County, Virginia, about the 2018 shuttering of the Caroline Progress, a 99-year-old weekly paper that was shuttered months before its 100th anniversary.

In “Print Imprint: The Connection Between the Physical Newspaper and the Self,” published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, wistful Virginians remember their senior high school portrait and their daughter’s picture in a wedding dress appearing in the Progress. Plus, one told Mathews, “My fingers are too clean now. I feel sad without ink smudges.”

The many and varied uses

Flush with cash from Omahans who invested years ago with local boy Warren Buffett, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab is a well-equipped center for migratory waterfowl, wading birds, reptiles, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mink and beaver.

“We get over 8,000 animals every year and we use that newspaper for almost all of those animals,” Executive Director Laura Stastny says.

Getting old newspapers has never been a problem in this neighborly Midwestern city. Yet Stastny frets about the electronic future.

“We do pretty well now,” she says. “If we lost that source and had to use something else or had to purchase something, that, with the available options that we have now, would cost us more than $10,000 a year easily.”

That would be nearly 1% of the budget, Stastny says, but “I’ve never been in a position to be without them, so I might be shocked with a higher dollar figure.”

Until 1974, the Omaha World-Herald printed a morning edition and two afternoon ones, including a late-afternoon Wall Street Edition with closing prices.

“Afternoon major league baseball was still standard then, so I got to gorge on both baseball and stock market facts,” an 85-year-old Buffett told the World-Herald in 2013, By then, he had become the world’s most famous investor and the paper’s owner.

The World-Herald ended its second afternoon edition in 2016 and Buffett left the newspaper business five years ago. Fewer than 60,000 households take the paper today, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, down from nearly more than 190,000 in 2005, or about one per household.

Time marches on

Few places symbolize the move from print to digital more than Akalla, a district of Stockholm where the ST01 data center sits at a site once occupied by the factory that prints Sweden main newspaper, Kaun says.

“They have less and less machines, and instead the building is taken over more and more by this colocation data center,” she says.

Data centers use huge amounts of energy, of course, and the environmental benefit of using less printing paper is also offset by the enormous popularity of online shopping.

“You will see a decline in printed papers, but there is a huge increase in packaging,” says Cecilia Alcoreza, manager, of forest sector transformation for the World Wildlife Fund.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced in August that it would stop providing a print edition at year’s end and go completely digital, making Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper.

The habit of following the news — of being informed about the world — can’t be divorced from the existence of print, says Anne Kaun, professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm.

Children who grew up in homes with printed newspapers and magazines randomly came across news and socialized into a news-reading habit, Kaun observed. With cellphones, that doesn’t happen.

“I do think it meaningfully changes how we relate to each other, how we relate to things like the news. It is reshaping attention spans and communications,” says Sarah Wasserman, a cultural critic and assistant dean at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who specializes in changing forms of communication.

“These things will always continue to exist in certain spheres and certain pockets and certain class niches,” she says. “But I do think they’re fading.”

This photo shows the Montana Standard lying on Colleen Elliot’s doorstep on Oct. 18 in Butte, Mont. Colleen Elliott via AP

This photo shows a Montana Standard article about Colleen Elliot’s daughter, Robin Gammons, that was cut out of the paper and put on Elliott’s refrigerator, on Oct. 18 in Butte, Mont. Colleen Elliott via AP

This photo shows a Montana Standard article about Colleen Elliot’s daughter, Robin Gammons, that was cut out of the paper and put on Elliott’s refrigerator, on Oct. 18 in Butte, Mont. Colleen Elliott via AP

A 20-year-old Petaluma man has been arrested in connection with the racist vandalism left on the vehicle belonging to a well-known local youth basketball coach and former Harlem Globetrotter, police said.

The suspect, Corey Newman, was linked to the vandalism through surveillance video, police said. He was arrested Wednesday during a traffic stop and taken into custody without incident.

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Kia Rose believes every child deserves the opportunity to play a sport.

“Sports play a vital role in fostering physical health, teamwork, discipline and confidence for these young kids,” said Rose.

Unfortunately, said the Uniontown mom of six, some families can’t afford to do so.

Through her nonprofit the Ks Foundation, Rose wants to remove the financial obstacle. The foundation, started in July, will cover registration for youth sports for families that make $49,000 or less yearly.

All of her children are sports-oriented, Rose said, and there were times that she found it difficult to pay for their participation.

“I see how much sports can affect kids and how far it can go for them to excel in anything,” Rose said. “I created this foundation so it can take away the financial barriers for children and families so they at least have a chance to get out of the house.”

Rose, a 2013 graduate of Uniontown Area High School, said everything is private, so no one will know who is asking for the help.

The Ks Foundation has held a number of events to raise funds for the cause, such as a Night at the Oscars Gala in November at the Uniontown Country Club.

On Dec. 20, the foundation held a Christmas Toy Drive and were able to help at least 40 families, said Rose.

“I’m so grateful and thankful for our community as a whole to be able to get together and help these children so (they were) able to open up something during this holiday season,” she said.

On Jan. 25, the Ks Foundation is holding the “Dodge for a Cause” dodgeball tournament at the Uniontown YMCA.

While the focus is currently on children in Fayette County, Rose hopes to expand the foundation’s reach, first to neighboring counties. Then, said Rose, she hopes to take it statewide.

“It has to start somewhere. Every child deserves a chance to play, grow and succeed,” she said.

Those interested in contributing can contact the foundation on its Facebook page or by calling 724-434-9061. Rose said the foundation is in the process of establishing a website.

HARTFORD — Some people have no business coaching youth sports. Then there are those like Joseph Shattie who seemed to have been born for the role.

A standout athlete at Rice Memorial High School in Burlington and a Division I baseball player in college, Shattie certainly knew the game of baseball. He would later learn to ice skate and coach hockey, while also officiating youth and high school games.

But coaching impressionable youths takes more than an understanding of the fundamentals and game strategies.

“He just had a way of connecting with kids,” said Bob Gaudet, a close friend and former longtime head coach of the Dartmouth men’s hockey team. “He was really respected. Joe was a big guy, but a Teddy Bear with a big smile. He had a way of communicating with the kids. He spoke to them at their level and made them feel comfortable.”

Shattie, who died June 23, at the age of 73 after a decades-long battle with heart disease, emphasized to his players what some might consider old school attributes such as doing the right thing, discipline and character.

“Joe was all about that stuff,” said Gaudet, who first met Shattie when their children played youth sports together in the 1990s. They stayed close over the years.

Sports were a thread that went through much of Shattie’s life.

He was born in Winooski, Vt. When he was just 3, his father died from an injury he had suffered during World War II and his mother moved him and his brother, Sam, to Florida to live with their aunt. He later returned to Vermont to finish high school at Rice and went on to play baseball at the University of Missouri.

His first career was in the bar and restaurant business in Burlington which led him and a friend to open Than Wheeler’s in White River Junction, which has since closed. It was there he met his future wife, who was playing in a women’s softball league at the time.

“It was my first summer playing and a friend on the team was celebrating her birthday so we went over there,” Cheryl Shattie recalled.

The couple were married almost 47 years before Shattie’s death. Together, they raised three sons, Jason, Kellen and Bryce.

“I would watch them interact together and they had this special bond,” said Todd Bebeau, the Hartford High School boys hockey coach who worked with Shattie at the Quechee Golf Course for a couple of years. “I had so much respect for the love they shared.”

All three of the Shattie sons played sports and their dad often coached them.

“He was a firm believer in hard work and having fun,” said Bryce, who lives in East Hampton, Mass. “He thought you could be both competitive and a good sport. It was what we often talked about.”

Growing up in Florida, Shattie never learned how to skate, but when his children took an interest in skating and hockey, he decided to learn, which is not an easy task as an adult.

“It took a lot of courage to learn how to skate and learn the game of hockey,” Bebeau said. “But Joe did it because he wanted to be involved with his kids and the hockey community. Joe did things for all the right reasons. It is the type of father Joe was. If his kids were involved in something, he wanted to be fully engrossed in it.”

Shattie learned how to coach and referee hockey games, often traveling long distances after working his day job in Richmond, Vt., where he was a sales manager for Caterpillar equipment. Shattie joined Caterpillar after selling Than Wheelers. Despite the long drives every day to Richmond, Shattie maintained his commitment to his family and his children’s sports.

“He would drive 50 miles one way to work, drive 50 miles home and then hop in the car and drive us to where our sporting event was,” recalled his son, Kellen, who lives in White River Junction.

Even after his children had aged out of the recreation and high school sports scene, Shattie didn’t want to give up what he loved doing for the kids and his community.

“I said, ‘Why are we going all over the state of New Hampshire when we don’t even have a kid in any of this?’ ” Cheryl Shattie once asked her husband. “I just know how much he loved doing it.”

Shattie also was known for his easy-going temperament. Stephen DeFelice, Shattie’s neighbor whose son, Brad, played baseball with Shattie’s son, Bryce, remembers those qualities on display when Shattie was a hockey referee.

Some parents, who think their child is destined for the NHL, can get a little overzealous watching a game, DeFelice said.

“It was not uncommon for your neighbor to be hollering at you if you made a bad call,” DeFelice said. “It may not have been a bad call, but they thought it was. And Joe would just have this big grin on his face when people would holler at him.”

In addition to coaching, Shattie served on the Hartford Zoning Board of Adjustment and his work with the Rotary Club earned him the Paul Harris Fellow Award, the service organization’s highest award. Shattie also served on the Friends of Dartmouth Hockey, helping to raise money through events such as the annual golf tournament.

After retiring, Shattie, around the age of 70, took a job working at the driving range at the Quechee Golf Course and was soon known as the “Mayor of the Driving Range,” Cheryl Shattie said.

Bebeau, the Hartford hockey coach, has fond memories of his time with Shattie at the Quechee Golf Course, listening to his stories about his time on the road with Caterpillar.

“He didn’t need to work, but he just loved being around people,” Bebeau said. “He always had a big smile on his face and was a great storyteller. He was one of the most positive people I have known. People you talk to will tell you they were drawn to Joe because Joe was a quality human being.”

Health problems plagued Shattie beginning at age 40 when he suffered a heart attack that required stents. Ten years later, after another heart attack, Shattie had quadruple bypass surgery and finally, he had a third heart attack at age 66. Shattie’s many heart problems were hereditary and he worked hard, with an exercise routine and nutritious meals, to improve his health.

“Family was first for him and that was a big motivator,” Cheryl Shattie said.

Shattie, who was an avid birdwatcher who enjoyed their peaceful vacations in Upstate New York, knew he was lucky to survive his health scares and never took a day for granted, his son Kellen said.

“He really wanted to enjoy the time he had,” Kellen said.

Shattie used his own experience to help his neighbors, the DeFelices, when Dawn DeFelice had open heart surgery at the onset of COVID in 2020.

“Anytime my wife had a question, ‘Is this normal?’ or ‘Should this be happening?’ Joe had an answer,” Stephen DeFelice said. “He knew what she was going through and would call to check on her to be sure she was OK because we were isolated. Joe was a real godsend for us during that time.”

Gaudet began his remarks at a memorial service for Shattie by referring to a video of the Shatties filmed for Dartmouth Health. The couple talked about Shattie’s heart attacks and the care he received, hoping it would encourage others to pay closer attention to their health and not let the busy lives they lead prevent them from taking care of themselves.

Gaudet noted that Shattie began the video by saying, “Life is precious.”

It was a credo Shattie lived each day, Gaudet said at the memorial.

“All of us who knew Joe remember how uplifted we were in any encounter with him,” Gaudet said. “We miss him so much.”

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.