4-H Consumer Decision Making Contest Promotes Smart Shopping

Suggested Anchor Introduction

Teens take on a shopping challenge during the 4-H consumer decision making contest. Anna María Pérez-Wright has the story.

Story

Click to Listen:

Decisions, decisions. That's the point of the 4-H consumer decision making contest, which helps young people learn to be savvy shoppers. Tamara Rowlin of Roswell is an incoming New Mexico State University freshman and will major in Family and Consumer Sciences. She says the contest is valuable for those, like her, getting ready to strike out on their own.

"You're going to learn how to save your money and you're going to learn how to make the decisions that you need to make on what's the best quality and what you need for your particular situation so you don't wind up with something that's not going to work for you."

The contest requires students to make a product choice for a specific situation. This year's competitors evaluated place settings, sleeping bags, snacks, toys, environmental shopping and check writing. Doña Ana County 4-H'er Adrian Alba found the toy evaluation useful.

"I know there's a lot of girls that babysit and if they need to buy toys or something to keep the kids busy, they can choose better things for them so that they don't hurt themselves."

Jody Reeser of Clayton thinks the contest makes young people more aware when shopping. The environmental shopping evaluation was his favorite.

"Environmental concerns are growing and in that particular one we had to look at four different things and figure out which one would be less waste and less cost, but would also feed more people."

Reeser's teammate Chelsey Miller had the high individual score in the contest, with the team from Curry County winning the competition. They'll compete against teams from eight states in January at the Western 4-H Round Up in Denver. For N-M-S-U's College of Agriculture and Home Economics, I'm Anna María Pérez-Wright.