University of Illinois Extension Champaign County - Creating Horse SPIN Clubs

     My main project of my internship experience was to create horse SPIN Clubs around Champaign county. To understand this project you must first understand what a SPIN Club is and how it differs from a 4-H Community Club. A SPIN Club is a special interest club where five or more young people learn about a topic of interest. Topics vary and include interests such as nature, heritage arts, science, photography, gardening, shooting sports, and more. SPIN Clubs are led by volunteers who have a passion and want to share their knowledge with young people. SPIN Clubs only need to meet for a minimum of 6 times, with the hopes of keeping the club running long therm. With that in mind, my project was to create SPIN Clubs around Champaign county that would focus on learning about horses. 4-H Community Clubs are what you would term your basic 4-H Clubs. These clubs are led by one or more volunteers, and they focus on more than one project area. Kids in these clubs choose their own project that they work individually on with the end goal of exhibiting that project at their county fair. In these clubs children may learn about one topic one meeting and then something completely different the next meeting, this is where 4-H Community Clubs differ from the SPIN Clubs, since they learn about one topic each meeting but grow in expertise as they continue.

Westbrook Stables - Mahomet

     When I first started back in May my initial assignments was to recruit volunteers from the community that would be interested in leading these clubs. I first started by looking up local horse barns and contacting them by email. In total I reached out to 10 different horse barns, farms, and operations. I had about 4 respond to me with 2 clubs actually getting formed. After I had email correspondence from these potential volunteers, I then had to schedule a meeting time with them where I could explain the roles of being a SPIN Club leader and how to get started. My first meeting was in Mahomet at Westbrook Stables, which occured on only my 4th day of my internship! I had the assistance of my SPIN Coordinator, Melissa Bender, whereas she attended this meeting with me and helped me explain the parts that I was still unsure of when pitching to our potential volunteer. This meeting went very well as they will be one of our formed SPIN Clubs. Our next successful SPIN Club came out of Pesotum at Healing Horses Stables, a therapeutic riding barn. This meeting was the second one I completed on my own, where I went to the location and provided our SPIN Club pitch alone. Along with finding SPIN Club leaders, I also have to recruit the youth who will be participating in these clubs. This included creating a flier, sending a newsletter, and even advertising on Facebook. I was then responsible for organizing a way to answer all questions and concerns as well as keep track of who is interested in what club so that I can contact them once the club is ready to begin.
     After I explained to potential leaders what a SPIN Club is I then give them a volunteer screening packet that they must complete in order to be a volunteer with Extension. Before we can move further along the process of forming a club this form must come back to the office and be approved through the various checks that are required. This is where we got held up in forming our clubs. The screening process is hard to judge how long it will take as some checks are out of our control. We finally had most of our volunteers screened by the end of July, so we were allowed to start continuing on with getting our Horse SPIN Club formed.

Horse SPIN Club Leader Training - Pesotum Leaders

     After a volunteer leader is approved they then must go through leader training given by Melissa and myself. We held a meeting for both our Mahomet and Pesotum leaders together so that they could meet each other, share ideas, and get trained at once. We spent and hour and a half going through the 4-H basics, 4-H policies, defining what a SPIN Club is, planning procedures for SPIN Clubs, risk management, and other related topics. The meeting was successful when we finally got start dates and times set up for the clubs. Because of how the 4-H year works our clubs actually will not be able to begin until September. With our leaders being trained and ready to go I could then move onto the next step of contacting our youth. From now until our club starts I will be working on getting responses from the youth to see if they are still interested in joining the Horse SPIN Clubs as well as mailing them the necessary forms for them to enroll.
     From this 3 month long experience I learned that things do not go as planned. We initially thought that our Mahomet club would have been started before July. However, with the screening process this was out of our control. This dilemma did allow for me to focus on other projects at the time, but it would've been nice to have our youth participate in a summer club. Another small victory for us is that both of our Horse SPIN Clubs plan to extend their clubs past the 6 meeting time minimum and want to be long term clubs. It will be a great experience for me to see both of these clubs grow and continue as I will be interning with Extension throughout the school year.