Youth Tour Winners Bound for D.C.

McKinley Cantwell and Emily Hutchins will represent Gulf Coast Electric Cooperative in Washington, D.C., at June’s annual Rural Electric Youth Tour. The 2 were selected in the cooperative’s recent competition. Laila Suber is the alternate.

The co-op sponsors the contest for high school juniors whose parents or guardians are GCEC members.

A panel of 3 judges from the electric cooperative industry interviews contestants. 2 winners are chosen for an all-expenses -paid trip to Washington, D.C., where they join seniors-to-be from across the United States for a tour of the nation’s capital.

Local civic organizations and high schools nominate students for the trip. In February, GCEC took all nominated students on a 2-day trip to Tallahassee, where they toured sites in the state capital with high school juniors representing electric co-ops from across the state.

“Youth Tour is a great opportunity for us to reward local students for being outstanding leaders in their communities,” GCEC Vice President of Marketing and Communications Kristin Douglas says.

The Rural Electric Youth Tour program started in 1957 when co-ops sent students to Washington, D.C., to work during the summer. By 1964, the program caught on, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association began to coordinate the effort. Since then, thousands of young people have experienced this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit our nation’s capital and learn about cooperatives and the nation’s government.