Electric co-ops are inspiring the next generation of rural leaders through a variety of successful programs—from educational events to leadership and sports camps—that complement the annual Rural Electric Youth Tour
By Jody Garlock

As a hot July sun inches above towering pines ringing the Glen Eden Resort in Clark, Colo., groggy high school campers make their way from log cabins to a grassy meadow along the Elk River. A wake-up game of tag ensues, before everyone takes their seats under a big canopy. In short order, the students listen to a few words from the general manager they’ve elected from their ranks and receive a treasurer’s report on the canteen—the snack-and-soda cooperative—they’ve formed.

Welcome to summer camp, electric co-op style.
For more than 35 years, the Cooperative Youth Leadership Camp has served as a summer destination for high school students from electric co-op-served households in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Last summer, the multistate gathering brought together 84 youngsters for five days of co-op education, motivation, and plenty of fun.
“In that one-week period you really see a lot of kids blossom,” reports Bobbe Jones, camp director and assistant member services manager at Empire Electric Association in Cortez, Colo. “That’s really what the camp is all about. It demonstrates the co-op commitment to community by giving young people an opportunity to become leaders.”

Although participants arrive a bit unsure of themselves, fellow campers, and even the electric co-ops that sponsored them, activities ranging from presentations to a ride up a mountain in a gondola change that.
“When I talk with these kids at the beginning of the week, most don’t quite get what a co-op is,” comments camp counselor Jonathan Thornton, media support specialist at Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a generation and transmission co-op based in Westminster, Colo. “We show them there’s more to electricity than just flipping a switch.”

Through hands-on activities—be it donning lineman’s gear or adding up the day’s margins from the canteen—students gain confidence while developing a new perspective on co-ops. “Essentially, we open eyes,” adds Thornton.
Jones agrees: “Understanding what it means to be a member of a cooperative is a great way for students to begin the process of becoming active in their co-ops and communities back home.”

Like other electric co-op youth-centered programs, the long-running Colorado camp sometimes gets overshadowed by the always-popular Rural Electric Youth Tour, slated for next month, which NRECA has coordinated annually since 1964. To teens, the sightseeing trip to Washington, D.C., coupled with visits to congressional offices and a dance cruise down the Potomac River, seems pretty hard to beat.
However, Jones says that even apparently mundane things at the Cooperative Youth Leadership Camp, such as an outing to Tri-State G&T’s 1,274-MW, three-unit, coal-fired Craig Station power plant in Colorado, have proven to be a hit.

“While not glamorous on paper, the kids really enjoy it,” she stresses.
And although the camp doesn’t boast the allure of a bustling capital city, history, or famous monuments, its mountainous location carries its own appeal.
“When you show a picture of the Rocky Mountains to youth from the Great Plains, it tends to be just enough to drive interest,” points out Shana Holsteen, organizer of the Kansas delegation and communications director at Kansas Electric Cooperatives (statewide) in Topeka.

Of course, attracting participants takes work. Years ago, the camp changed its name as organizers admitted that the original moniker—Energy Seminar—just didn’t pack much punch.
“The name Cooperative Youth Leadership Camp implies that students will learn about who they are and what they can do,” Holsteen relates.
Teamwork also keeps the event going. Kansas sent its first campers back in 1977.

“We had such a great experience being part of a multistate delegation for Youth Tour that we wanted to extend that same opportunity to the camp,” Holsteen remarks.
The logistics of a multistate gathering take a little extra effort. The Kansas group, for example, boards a chartered bus in Topeka for a 12-hour-plus drive and stops at places along the route to pick up students representing Oklahoma co-ops.

At the camp, the cooperative spirit plays out in several ways—from employees who take shifts as counselors and instructors to former campers who return as ambassadors. Even the director’s job rotates every three years to a different Colorado co-op. Next year, Jones will pass the duties on to Ashley Valdez of San Isabel Electric Association in Pueblo.
“The idea of being responsible for 110 or so people for a week is a bit intimidating, but after the first year, I realized I was never in it alone,” Jones indicates. “The cooperative spirit is in all of the counselors attending the camp; they all participate and offer ideas and assistance. That’s what I love about being part of a cooperative.”

On the camper level, students who started out as strangers quickly become friends. At the end of the week, they jointly decide what to do with profits from the canteen in an exercise designed to emulate a real cooperative’s capital credits retirement. Last year, they voted to give their $74 profit back to the camp.

On a larger scale, Empire Electric uses its own unclaimed capital credits to help sponsor students at the camp. “Many of these kids would not be able to attend this or other youth programs if there was an out-of-pocket expense involved,” she contends. “Our co-op commitment to community gives these students a vehicle to one day excel as community leaders and, hopefully, electric co-op leaders as well, making them better prepared for future challenges.”
Holsteen believes the Cooperative Youth Leadership Camp generates a priceless amount of goodwill. “If you hand students a scholarship check, they may thank you. But when you take them on a week-long trip, they will remember you for life.”

Hoop dreams in North Carolina
When North Carolina electric co-ops began brainstorming on ways to promote the Touchstone Energy® Cooperatives brand to a younger generation, it didn’t take long to settle on something that would appeal to kids and co-ops alike: basketball.

“Basketball is king here in North Carolina,” affirms Catherine O’Dell, director of member & public affairs at South River Electric Membership Corporation in Dunn, N.C. Despite being an avid Duke University Blue Devils hoops fan, O’Dell had no trouble throwing her support behind co-op efforts to help rural sixth- through eighth-graders attend basketball camps conducted at arch Atlantic Coast Conference rivals North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina. “We just immediately saw an opportunity to build off a quality product for co-op children.”

Four years ago, the North Carolina Association of Electric Cooperatives (statewide) in Raleigh purchased 27 scholarships that member cooperatives participating in Touchstone Energy could use to send girls to a basketball camp run by North Carolina State University Wolfpack women’s head coach Kay Yow. Nearly all of the co-ops snapped them up
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In 2006, the statewide offered Touchstone Energy scholarships for a boys camp run by University of North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball coach Roy Williams. Again, interest among the co-ops ran high.
“We really wanted to promote the core values of Touchstone Energy Cooperatives—integrity, accountability, innovation, and commitment to community—to some of our youngest members, and this was a perfect way to do that,” asserts Kristie Aldridge, North Carolina Association of Electric Cooperatives communications specialist.

The camps offer kids much more than the opportunity to work on basketball fundamentals—they provide motivation and a chance for middle schoolers to do something that may have been out of reach for their families. The scholarships run $400 for the girls camp and $580 for the boys; interested students write essays outlining why they want to attend.

“The camps provide a teamwork and instruction atmosphere,” Aldridge says. “We really want the kids to walk away feeling like they’ve learned something about themselves as well as the game of basketball.”
Based on responses from participants and their parents, O’Dell sees that goal being accomplished.

“They write and e-mail us saying what a quality program it was and what a difference it made,” she notes. “One girl wasn’t really sure if she was college-bound. After she went to camp, we received a letter from her mother saying that her daughter now couldn’t wait to go to college.”

For O’Dell, such feedback shows that electric co-ops are getting something back from the sports camps. “You can’t put a dollar value on the impact of positively touching a student’s life.”
And, at least for the girls and their families, the experience extends into the next school year. The statewide association treats them to tickets to a Wolfpack women’s basketball game the following season, with the special co-op guests introduced at halftime.

“There’s no end in sight for this program because it’s such a hit,” Aldridge says. “It’s a great fit.”

Growing grassroots leaders
Electric cooperatives in the Show Me State knew they had a good thing going with Rural Electric Youth Tour—so good in fact that it had become increasingly difficult for some systems to choose just one or two participants from among those vying for a coveted spot on the weeklong excursion to the nation’s capital.

So, the co-ops thought, why not bring Youth Tour—or at least a variation of it—to their own capital city? As a result, CYCLE, the Cooperative Youth Conference and Leadership Experience, took shape four years ago.
For three days in July, high school sophomores and juniors convene in Jefferson City, Mo., for a fast-paced blend of education regarding cooperatives, leadership, and legislation. Coordinated by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives (statewide), the nationally recognized program has more than doubled from 30 participants the first year.

“It keeps getting bigger and better every year,” marvels Barry Hart, CEO of the Jefferson City-based statewide association. “It’s allowed more co-ops to get involved in doing things for young people in their service territories. If they don’t feel like they can afford to send students to Washington, D.C., for a week, they can still send them to the leadership conference.”
John Thomason, a past CYCLE chaperone and member services representative at Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative in West Plains, Mo., has never attended Youth Tour, but he sees similarities between the two programs.
“It’s like a mini Youth Tour,” he says of CYCLE.

That connection exists largely by design. When some member co-ops approached the statewide association about expanding youth offerings some years back, talk kept centering on the longstanding success of Youth Tour.
“We initially offered an energy camp,” mentions Mike Marsch, CYCLE coordinator and director of member services for the statewide. “But as we sat around talking, we kept asking ourselves ‘Why is Youth Tour so popular?’ Part of it is the travel, but part involves what students get to do. That’s when we decided to adopt a more state-legislative focus. Our member co-ops really brainstormed with us and came up with the concept for CYCLE.”
Like Youth Tour, CYCLE takes on a whirlwind feel. But compacted into three days, it appeals to students with busy summer schedules and ensures a tightly focused agenda.

The conference includes hands-on activities such as building an electric distribution system from string and Play-Doh, having the team that wins game show-inspired quizzes don yellow jerseys (a twist on the annual Tour de France bicycle race that tends to coincide with the event), and getting a special session with a Missouri Supreme Court justice.
On the second day, the statewide’s legislative department arranges for the CYCLE group to claim chambers in the state House of Representatives for an afternoon. Participants sit at lawmakers’ desks, and Marsch, acting as House speaker, engages the students in debating a mock bill.

Last year, the youngsters crafted legislation lifting their curfew. After being sent to the state Senate—in this case, co-op chaperones—a modified version of the bill passed, allowing the students to stay up 30 minutes later.
“We make it lighthearted so they learn the process and go through all the steps,” Marsch says.
National motivational speakers are another draw. Paralympic gold medalist Mike Schlappi last year shared his story of overcoming obstacles. This year, Daryl Scott will tell how he coped with the death of his daughter during the Columbine school shootings.

“Program content—and word of mouth—are key,” Marsch emphasizes. “Word of mouth travels so well in rural communities.”
Thomason, like many co-op coordinators, visits high schools in his area and recently had one English teacher make the essay application to attend the conference an extra-credit assignment.
“There’s nothing better than a direct call,” he suggests.

Co-ops individually decide how to select CYCLE attendees. Some offer it as a runner-up prize to Youth Tour, others promote it to high school sophomores as a sort of pre-Youth Tour build up, and a few offer it in lieu of Youth Tour. “A trip to the Missouri capital can be a big deal, especially for rural students,” Thomason observes.

For Hart, who worked for his hometown electric co-op during summer breaks in high school and college, CYCLE provides a way to tap into future leaders.
“I learned about rural electrification at a young, impressionable age,” he recalls. “Working day-to-day with the leaders of my electric cooperative had an impact on my work ethic and my attitude toward member service. We’re hoping that by exposing these high school students to the cooperative business model and what their electric cooperative is doing in local communities, we’ll develop stronger leaders down the road. There’s a long-term connection there, with a promising payoff.”

Reprinted with permission from the May 2008 issue of Rural Electric Magazine © National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.