Initiative Helps Club Expand Science, Engineering, and Technology Activities

REDLANDS, Calif., March 12, 2012 — (PRNewswire) — Esri has awarded 28 grants in its ninth annual GIS Grants for 4-H Program. Winning applications came from 17 states and one overseas US military installation.

This year, grantees will be using Esri's ArcGIS technology for a variety of service learning mapping projects including specifying protected environmental areas, highlighting local historical sites, expanding fitness trails, tracking foodborne illness, and working with a local community to develop emergency flood plans.

"The city of Brownsville, Tennessee, was greatly impacted during the May 2010 rainfall," says Tiffany Thomas, 4-H Club adviser. "The map we create will be used by city staff to quickly identify the location of their storm drainage system. This in turn will help the city plan for the future, anticipate problems, and quickly respond to future flooding. The 4-H youth will have hands-on experience in the field collecting existing storm drainage infrastructure data, which will increase their knowledge of storm drainage systems, GIS software applications, and mapping presentations."

In another project, 4-H Club members in Atchison County, Kansas, will create a historic map that includes many of the area's well-known sites, such as the birthplace of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, trails followed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Pony Express, and the Topeka railway route.

The Youth Program at Patrick Air Force Base in Satellite Beach, Florida, will produce an environmental map including the local shoreline, protected vegetation areas, streets, housing areas, canals, islands, bridges, and rivers.

"4-H and other youth-serving organizations integrating Esri's ArcGIS technology into their programs have been successful in advancing spatial literacy in youth," says Esther Worker, Esri's youth groups manager for education in industry solutions. "In addition to conducting and leading important local 4-H service learning projects using 'the technologies, 4-H youth are obtaining part-time GIS jobs while still in high school and expanding their GIS skills and knowledge for use in their future college studies, internships, and jobs." See a map of the many 4-H clubs using geospatial technology at esri.com/4-H.

About 4-H

The 4-H Club was founded in Ohio in 1902. Since that time, it has grown to become the largest youth organization in the United States, with more than 6.5 million youth members and adult leaders. It is part of the United States Department of Agriculture. For more information, visit www.4-H.org.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide, including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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