Idaho's 4-H Stream Team builds tech skills while expanding fair access

Members of Teresa Balderrama’s 4-H Stream Team work behind the scenes and don’t receive awards or ribbons at county fairs.

Instead, their work spotlights the accomplishments of fellow 4-H members while connecting families and communities to fair competitions and other 4-H events through livestreams, videos and digital storytelling.

The Stream Team, also known as the Digital Media Club, is an informal media team made up of youth from throughout the state who meet virtually at 7 p.m. PT on Mondays to coordinate coverage of University of Idaho Extension 4-H Youth Development events.

Thousands of 4-H members, along with their friends and family members, regularly view content on the Stream Team’s YouTube page, 4-H STEM on the Street. Team members gain valuable workforce skills in interviewing, storyboarding, photography, videography, technology operation and digital content production.

The Stream Team’s livestreams of 4-H livestock shows at northern Idaho county fairs provide an especially valuable service. Officials with one of the fairs considered hiring a professional streaming service but stuck with the Stream Team when the bid came back at more than $10,000.

This fair season, the team streamed more than 88 hours of livestock shows at the Bonner, Boundary, Latah and Kootenai county fairs, and a team member made a video highlighting general events at the Benewah County Fair. The livestreams were viewed by 6,044 people, not counting the viewers who watched stream recordings after the fact.

“It kind of hits a niche of kids who are not livestock kids, and they are not sewing kids,” Balderrama said. “They just love digital media.”

About 20 4-H members are regular Stream Team participants. The team is particularly popular among 4-H members who are homeschooled.

“It’s definitely a confidence boost, making you more confident with technology,” said Stream Team member Savanna Meyer, a sophomore at Lakeland Senior High School in Rathdrum. “We get to walk around with these microphone headsets and we feel really cool.”

The Stream Team originated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a group of youth used cell phones and tablets to livestream northern Idaho 4-H fair competitions for friends and family members who were unable to attend because of social distancing restrictions. The streams were well received, and in 2022, Balderrama secured $540,800 in federal American Rescue Plan Act stimulus funding, awarded through the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, to purchase video equipment. She built a wooden table on wheels, which her team uses to roll video equipment to livestock arenas for filming shows. Her videographers use a joystick to control multiple cameras at once.

“A lot of the Stream Team members do show animals, too, but it also gives the kids who normally wouldn’t have a reason to be at the fair an opportunity to be a part of it,” Balderrama said.

During the 2026 Kootenai County Fair, Meyer showed a 4-H goat and a dairy heifer she raised as an FFA project while also exhibiting a 4-H veterinary science poster. Helping the Stream Team set up equipment and operate cameras gave her something productive to do when she wasn’t in the show ring. During fair week, Meyer logged about 20 volunteer hours with the team.

“If I have time to be on my phone, then I have time for another thing,” said Meyer, who plans to become a large animal veterinarian. “It also looks good on a college or job application to say, ‘I know how to run a soundboard, and I know how to run software programs.’”

Thanks to the livestreams, many parents who cannot leave work are still able to watch their children compete. Many 4-H members who show animals review recordings to evaluate their performances and identify opportunities for improvement.

The broadcasts are especially popular with out-of-town relatives. At the Latah County Fair, Balderrama heard of grandparents who couldn’t attend their grandchild’s 4-H show in person due to a flight cancellation, but they watched the livestream from Texas. She also learned of a grandmother in Dublin, Ireland, who tuned in to watch her grandchildren show dairy cows.

The Stream Team livestreams 14 livestock shows at each fair, as well as the market sale. Youth in northern Idaho with access to the video equipment have also livestreamed a high school football game, an Ironman triathlon, junior rodeos and a speaker at the annual Idaho 4-H Know Your Government Conference. Team members also produce a regular 4-H STEM on the Street podcast, as well as videos, video shorts and news reels covering major 4-H events.

Stream Team members from other regions of the state who can’t access the team’s fancy equipment use their own cell phones and tablets to capture footage and have access to free editing and graphics-production software and apps.

One Bonneville County member plans to produce a video with an insider’s perspective of the annual Idaho 4-H Learn, Engage, Act, Develop (I-LEADS) Summit.

Balderrama often recruits new Stream Team members during the Idaho 4-H State Teen Association Convention in Moscow, where she presents a workshop on making news reels and creating social media content. She also promotes the program to students at the Know Your Government Conference, where she works with 4-H members assigned to play the roles of legislative reporters.

During fair week, Meyer and her peers seek out 4-H members who appear to be bored to pitch in and help with streaming, which has been among the most effective means of growing the program.

“A lot of kids just sit around the fair or just go home, but if you have Stream Team, you have something to look forward to,” Meyer said. “It really helps kids get out of their comfort zones. It’s not fully throwing them to the wolves with public speaking, but it’s helping them work as a team, because we couldn’t do it with any one person.”