Youth Development

CCE Broome County brings youth development into the places young people already are - their classrooms, their afterschool hours, and their neighborhoods. Working in partnership with school districts across the region, we help students from elementary grades through high school build academic, social, and career skills grounded in Cornell University research.

Agriculture in the Classroom builds custom, standards-aligned curricula that bring food, farming, and conservation into the school day across 13 districts in Broome, Cortland, and Tioga counties. RootED offers year-round afterschool and summer programming in all seven Binghamton City School District elementary schools, inspiring STEAM careers and civic engagement. 4-H UNITY partners with Union-Endicott School District to work with teens and their parents together, building leadership and workforce skills while families take on community issues like food access and healthy living.

Learn more about each program below.

group shot of UNITY youth and volunteers

4-H UNITY

4-H UNITY (Urban Neighborhoods Improved Through Youth) uses Cornell Cooperative Extension’s 4-H Signature Program, Youth Community Action, with a two-generation approach to address poverty, childhood obesity and food insecurity.
The approach focuses on the needs of vulnerable teens and their parents together, with the unifying goal of strengthening family well-being, improving the community and breaking the cycle of generational poverty. UNITY Endicott partners with the Union-Endicott school district and combines 4-H youth development, civic engagement, STEM education, nutrition and parent education to ensure teens demonstrate the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors necessary for fulfilling, contributing lives, and promotes healthy lifestyles among teens and their parents/guardians.

Together, UNITY teen/parent teams become community change agents and conduct community improvement projects addressing critical USDA/NIFA goals. “Visiting professors”, experts in their fields, offer education to the UNITY Teen Leaders highlighting community.

UNITY follows the "Public Adventures" curriculum, addressing projects to combat childhood obesity, promote healthy lifestyles, increase food access, and improve relationships between youth and law enforcement. The teen/parent teams will conduct community projects in an effort to build community awareness of issues important to young people. fostering meaningful civic engagement.

UNITY teens will demonstrate improved leadership and workforce development skills as their community projects, job shadowing and internships provide opportunities for real-world skill application. Teens will gain the skills needed to prepare them for college, careers and citizenship. UNITY will establish a strong foundation for long-term sustainability by intentionally engaging school staff, local government leaders, businesses and community organizations in partnerships to ensure UNITY’s continuation.

Agriculture in the Classroom

Broome County's Agriculture in the Classroom (AITC) program welcomes you to our program. We collaborate with school districts to create custom curricula that integrate agriculture into education while aligning with district goals and standards. Our curriculum covers various topics such as food, conservation, farming, and more, adaptable to grade levels. Lessons also align with language arts, math, science, and social studies to meet New York State and National Common Core Learning Standards. This program is supported by Cornell Cooperative Extension and serves 13 school districts in Broome, Cortland, and Tioga County, including the school districts: Chenango Forks, Chenango Valley, Deposit, Harpursville, Johnson City, Maine-Endwell, Marathon, Owego-Apalachin, Susquehanna Valley, Union Endicott, Vestal, Whitney Point, and Windsor.

A group of children learning how to make gingerbread dough

RootED Afterschool Program

4-H RootED is RootED in education, RootED in civic engagement, and RootED in inspiring STEAM careers.

4-H RootED is a year-round program, providing both afterschool and summer programming in Binghamton City School District’s (BCSD) seven elementary schools.

RootED uses Cornell University’s 4-H Signature Program, Youth Community Action to improve the social, emotional, academic and vocational competencies of elementary school-age youth.

The goal of RootED is to inspire careers in Science, Technology, Engineering/Environment, Art/Agriculture and Math (STEAM) and prepare young people to care about others through civic engagement and community improvement projects. BCSD provides funding for RootED.