Youth Tour

The results are in and we would like to congratulate the 2012 Youth Tour Finalists! Once again we held a great contest and received many well written essays. The essays were narrowed down to six, with the finalists being pictured above. On April 11th the six finalists came to the Cooperative to compete for three all expense paid, week long trips to Washington, D.C. and three tuitions to the nationally recognized youth leadership conference, CYCLE.

The 2012 D.C. winners are Haley McGrath of Fulton High School, Madlyn Jennings of New Bloomfield High School, and Josh Evans of Rockbridge High School.

If you are not familiar with the Youth Tour Contest, it starts in the fall of each year. Callaway Electric Cooperative sponsors a contest for high school juniors living in or attending school in the Cooperative's service area. Participants are asked to write an essay on a topic chosen by the Cooperative, and in turn they have a chance to win one of three all expense paid, week long trips to Washington, D.C. Three runner ups receive tuition to a 3 day leadership conference hosted and put on by Missouri's electric cooperatives. For more information about the conference, click here.

The D.C. trips are sponsored by Callaway Electric and put together by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The three winners from Callaway Electric join approximately 80 other high school juniors from across Missouri. Our Missouri group tours the nation's capitol during the same week as 1500 other high school juniors from electric cooperatives across the country.

The Youth Tour is a wonderful opportunity, first thought of by the then Senator Lyndon Johnson in the late 1950s. Callaway Electric has participated in the program as far back as 1966.

Stay tuned for details about our 2013 contest. You can also visit YouTube to see some of the 2011 delegates as they recollect their trip to D.C.