ALAMOSA — Twelve-year-old Toni Wells, longtime member of the 4-H club of the San Luis Valley, was recently announced as the top seller in a fundraiser to support the Livestock Judging Team. Donations and fundraisers are crucial to a program like the Livestock Judging Team as the program can involve traveling when not all team members may have the financial ability to participate.  

The fundraiser was a raffle where anyone who bought a ticket for $10 had the chance to win either “half a hog or a whole lamb.” Each member of the Livestock Judging team was issued 20 tickets to sell. 

But Toni set her sight a little bit higher. She has been a part of 4-H for half of her life, after first joining as a “Cloverbud,” a program for 5 to 7 years old. Once a kid turns 8 years old, they become part of the program that serves youth aged 8 years old to 18. 

During those years, Toni has learned an array of skills, many of which ingrain a certain level of commitment and confidence in a kid including, but not limited to, community service; keeping a record book, setting goals and establishing a budget on projects; doing demonstrations; public speaking, and, in Toni’s case, skills involved in judging livestock. That background likely played a role in what happened next. 

After selling to the usual buyers, Toni got some support from 4-H Youth Specialist Carol Gurule who sent out an email to some people she knew, letting them know about Toni and the raffle.  But the message was clear; after that, any work was completely up to Toni, who immediately set out speaking to each person - adults she didn’t know both in and out of the Valley - and giving them her sales pitch.   

Something like that would possibly be a bridge too far for many 12-year-olds, but not Toni.  After speaking to each person, she ended up selling 100 tickets, raising a total of $1,000 and the honor of being the top seller. Toni’s sales pitch must have been pretty effective as she even sold a ticket to a vegetarian. 

“She was pretty pumped about selling so many tickets,” says Mollie Wells, Toni’s mother. Last year, Wells was hired as a 4-H Youth Specialist but has been a strong advocate for the program long before she was hired for the position. “Toni’s been in 4-H since she was in Cloverbud and every year she’s had to do a fundraiser for the club she was in. I’ve taught her from a young age, it’s not my job to go out and sell this for you. This is your project, your club. So, she’s been using those skills she’s learned to communicate and speak to the public for a long time. She’s always taken it pretty seriously.”  

The lucky winner was a woman named Anna Osterhout who, according to Mollie Wells,  was looking for a good place to donate part of the lamb. Thinking that lamb is a common food in different cultures, Osterhout then reached out to Oneyda Maestas, M.A., Coordinator of Adams State University’s Cultural Awareness and Student Achievement Center, and donated the meat for her students. 

When asked about her experience, Wells says, “I was really excited but I didn’t think I was going to get to the top seller because one person on our team was already on his second packet when I started. So, I just talked to everybody I could think of and some people I didn’t know. I was pretty happy when I sold that many tickets.” 

When asked about the lamb being given to a program at ASU, she says, “I just sold the ticket that got the lamb that ended up going to the students, so I wouldn’t consider that community service. But I sold the ticket that helped the community. So, I thought that was neat.” 

When asked about her next challenge, she says, “To do well and do good and keep doing this and working hard.” 

While the 4-H program is largely funded by grants, donations and allocations from county commissioners in the San Luis Valley, many of the programs also rely on donations that come from patrons in the community and fundraisers carried out through the hard work of the 4H club members, themselves.  

Sixteen 4-H clubs serve kids throughout the Valley with 375 to 500 youth who are members. Through outreach programs that go into classrooms and serve home schooled students in all six counties, 4-H Youth Specialists will have reached between 4,000 and 5,000 students this year.