Urban Rural Bridging the
Divide By being on the land and walking in the shoes of their host
families, students begin to understand more deeply how and why Oregonians manage the land the way they do.
By Maureen Hosty (With contributions from Gary Delaney, Deb Schreiber, John Williams, Jed Smith and Shana Withee)
natural resource management issues. Oregon cities are now so culturally isolated from the country that clashes between urban and rural Oregon occur frequently when it comes to grazing, logging, wilderness and wildlife. That was the world Portland urban youth walked into when they took a stand in defense of wolves in 2005 at a public Fish and Wildlife hearing. Ranchers howled in protest. Yet, just as it seemed Oregon’s urban- rural divide had grown into an unbridgeable chasm this conflict ended when 4-H stepped in. 4-H staff from urban and rural Oregon along with a handful of ranchers from rural Grant County did the unexpected. They invited kids from urban Portland middle school to live and work along side them and see a rancher or farmers side of life.
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regon is a state of great socioeconomic and geographic diversity. While this diversity brings strength, it also challenges Oregonians to meet
the needs of all communities. This divide is mostly deeply felt around
Today the 4-H Urban-Rural Exchange involves youth
as a catalyst for change for a sustainable Oregon future by providing a venue for rural and urban youth and families to share their stories, their lifestyles, their beliefs and their practices for managing the land for the next generation. Through this program, urban youth and their adult chaperons travel to rural Eastern Oregon to live and work alongside 4-H ranch and farm host families for 6 days. Likewise, rural youth travel to Portland with adult chaperons to live and work alongside their 4-H urban host family. The program provides youth
Students from urban Portland get a taste of life on a cattle ranch. Photo by Lynn Ketchum.
who are too often exposed to viewpoints on one side of an issue, a first hand experience on the land. It is this experience of being on the land and walking in the shoes of their host family that youth can begin to understand more deeply how and why Oregonians manage the land the way they do. Through the process of developing this program 4-H Faculty quickly learned that a key to helping youth understand the the natural resource issues as well as the sustainability and resiliency of their host community, youth
first need some knowledge about the dynamics of the influential social, environmental, and economic systems that underlie them. Thus, while the program began as a response to the issue of the
www.clearingmagazine.org/online CLEARING 2011
4-H Urban-Rural Exchange
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