As the Trump administration continues to cut federal spending in multiple areas, Sitka’s 4-H program has received notice that the Department of Agriculture has terminated the grant that funds about half of the 4-H budget.
The 4-H Alaska Way of Life program is run by the nonprofit Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, offering people ages 5 to 18 a chance to learn outdoor skills such as boating and water safety, bicycling, deer and fish butchering and berry gathering.
“It’s all about teaching skills for youth in Sitka to be the Alaskans of the future and build the state into the next chapter," Sitka Conservation Society Executive Director Andrew Thoms said.
4-H is a century-old American institution for youth development, funded by U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service grants as well as state, local, corporate and volunteer contributions. In Alaska, 4-H operates under the umbrella of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.
Thoms said USDA notified the Conservation Society by email on April 18 that their $250,000 funding for 4-H was terminated, effective immediately. The notice alleged discrimination as a cause for ending the grant, and said the department is working to ensure grants are free of alleged “fraud, abuse and duplication.”
“It is a priority of the Department of Agriculture to eliminate discrimination in all forms. … That priority includes ensuring that the department’s awards do not support programs or organizations that promote or take part in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” the letter continues.
Thoms said he was unsure how the agency determined there was discrimination in Sitka’s 4-H programs.
“In this grant, we do talk about integrating traditional cultural values for living with the land and building community that are based on traditional Tlingit values, and bringing those together with values related to land management, forestry and civic values of being American and taking part in your community,” Thoms said. “And I don’t know if it was because of the cultural values that we got flagged.”
Though 4-H in Sitka looks different than it does in the Lower 48 states, Thoms said the courses offered locally teach essential Alaska skills that help kids to be members of the community.
“These programs down south are heavily funded by the state contributions and others for getting kids into career pathways like dairy farming and crops and farming,” he said. “In Southeast Alaska, the skills our kids need are how to hunt and fish, how to be safe on the water, and how to go into the career pathways that we might need for forestry, commercial fishing, local food production, business management. All of those are skills 4-H teaches, which is why we’re invested in part of that program.”
The USDA grant made up half of the annual budget for 4-H, with the remainder from local matching funds.
Those local funds will keep 4-H summer camps open to Sitka kids this year.
“We’ve been able to raise some money to keep summer camps going and find some other sources of funding that you know will get us a little bit further, like local funding,” he said.
4-H began in Sitka under the university in the 1990s but has run with Sitka Conservation Society collaboration since 2011. It serves about 100 kids annually.
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