Christine Oldfield took over the position on April 6
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Ontario’s youth agricultural organization has a new leader.
Christine Oldfield became 4-H Ontario’s new executive director on April 6. She will be tasked with working with staff, the board of directors and the 4-H Foundation to develop a new vision for the organization.
She brings more than 15 years of experience working in not-for-profit leadership including as executive director at the People and Information Network and has developed campaigns like the Ontario Volunteer Youth Challenge.
She is also the program coordinator for the not-for-profit sector program at Conestoga College.
Christine Oldfield/4-H Ontario photo
Oldfield is looking forward to getting to work and finding new ways to engage with Ontario’s youth.
“I’m very excited to join the organization,” she told Farms.com. “The staff and board are very passionate.”
The organization is working under a strategic planning framework that began last year.
4-H Ontario will now have to learn to adapt plans to coincide with COVID-19 restrictions.
“By the time I accepted the job and started, the world has changed,” she told Farms.com. “Our approach right now is adapting and pivoting programming in a way that we can still provide value to youth; just in a way that’s more virtual than in person.”
4-H Ontario has nearly 6,000 youth members and 2,000 volunteers.
One item Oldfield has noticed in her early days as the head of 4-H Ontario is the way volunteers speak about the organization compared to how they may describe volunteer work elsewhere.
“People don’t say, ‘I’m a volunteer,’ they say, ‘I’m a 4-Her,’” she said. “To me, that’s a fundamental difference where people view this organization as part of their identity and that it will be part of the identify of their families.”