4-H Community Conversations:
Youth Open Forum 

Kansas 4-H and the K-State Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy invite youth to use their leadership and communication skills to learn how to have tough conversations that matter.

4-H Community Conversations offer youth the opportunity to join together to deliberate in an open forum, to make choices with others about ways to approach difficult issues and have tough conversations to work toward creating reasoned public judgment for the common good. Forums focus on a youth issue such as health, safety, violence, education, drugs and alcohol abuse, bullying, rural and urban issues, and much more. The forums provide a way for youth of diverse views and experiences to seek a shared understanding of the problem and to search for common ground for action. Forums are led by trained, neutral youth moderators who present the overall problem and then three or four approaches to working through the problem. Youth forum participants work through the issue by considering each approach; examining what appeals to them or concerns them, and also what the costs, consequences, and trade-offs may be that would be incurred in following that approach.