Mississippi Youth Takeover

The Mississippi 4-H Tech Team in Lucedale, Mississippi continues breaking through obstacles, tackling big problems and making measurable contributions where they live. When Hurricane Katrina struck Lucedale on August 29, 2005 the town of around 3,000 people were left without power and vital information from their traditional outlets of the radio and television. Since the popular social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter weren't included in the original communication plan, eight high school students from the Mississippi 4-H Tech Team knew it was time for action. With an understanding of the emerging role social media plays in the lives of millions of people the 4-H'ers met with Lucedale Mayor Doug Lee, the local fire and police department, the development association, chamber of commerce and other emergency management professionals, to train them on how to use social media to quickly communicate with the public and each other during an emergency.

As a result of this meeting on August 15, 2011 approximately 30 Lucedale residents crowded City Hall to learn from these youth on how Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube are important communication tools during an emergency, as well utilizing these social media sites within their business for marketing. The 4-H Tech Team went into detail on how social media outlets work and trained the officials and business owners on a one-on-one basis. "If we were able to do this six months before Katrina hit, we would've been able to send out alerts to everyone in our community," said George County 4-H'er, Marissa Landen. "If they had their cell phone, now that Facebook is on cell phones, and if Wi-Fi was down at the time, they would know where to get water from and where to go find food from."  After conducting several training sessions for emergency management professionals throughout the state, this awesome group of high school students were able improve the emergency communication methods and developed a strong leadership role within their community.  The Mississippi 4-H Tech Team has conducted several trainings to emergency management professionals and business owners throughout the state of Mississippi, and continues to provide training sessions to three surrounding counties. This is an awesome example of youth leadership at it's finest!