Youth activity ideas?

I've recently been elected youth chairman of my miniature horse club and I've been looking for ideas for fun activities.

Anyone have any ideas for games/contests we could do at meetings and shows and ways to fundraise money for the club?

As for fundraisers, you could have the youth design t-shirts to have printed and sell, they could have a bake sale or make horsey themed crafts to sell (horse shoe crafts, horse show ribbon crafts etc). You could have pony plop contests (paint a grid on the ground with chalk paint, #the grid and replicate on paper, "sell" grids to people for a fixed amount before hand, let the pony loose on the grid and whatever square he poops on is the winner, it is usually a 50/50 raffle so the club gets 1/2 of the $.

As for contests and activities for the kids to encourage participation; have coloring or drawing contests, stick pony races, horse trivia games, pin the tail on the donkey etc.

I'm not sure what your goals are with the youth but something that might be fun is a musical chairs/speed dating kind of game. Each youth has a horse and at a set time decided by music or a timer they would switch horses to set them up for halter or do a short showmanship, in hand obstacle or jumping course (depends on which is the best fir for the youth in the group) That gives them lots of practice with different horses. I cant come up with a single thing at the moment for a fund raiser. Amysue has some excellent ideas above.

Our youth club does a chuck a duck every show. They also sell coffee and donuts; as well as t shirts and sweatshirts every year.

The only fund raiser I can think of that we did with our club was to make and sell calendars. We used pictures of club members horses (we charged a small fee for the page so it helped pay for the calendar up front) and then sold to anyone we could convince that the pictures were too cute to pass up

How about a car boot sale. Everyone at your club brings in unwanted items that have been laying round the tack room for ever. All money raised goes towards the club.

Sausage sizzle at your local hardware, we have a BIG hardware store here and every sat and sunday a local club or charity has the chance to run the BBQ , monies after cost goes towards the club.

Maybe you could get a few rugs designed with your club logo or something along those lines and have a big raffle .

Good luck , let us know how it goes

I've seen some clubs have members donate show clothes for resale and have a sales booth. This is very helpful for kids who show. As they outgrow

a show shirt or jacket, another youngster can use it. Youth members could help operate the booth (with an adult) when not showing.