Each year, Jackson EMC sends two area high-school students to learn about leadership.

The Washington Youth Tour brings together more than 1,500 highly talented, ambitious young people from across the country to experience our nation's capital and further develop their leadership skills. The tour was inspired by then Senator Lyndon Johnson at a National Rural Electric Cooperative Association meeting.

Jackson EMC selects its two tour delegates from the winners of the Energy Bowl (EB)and the Youth Citizenship Award (YCA). Each winner of these two events is awarded the all-expense paid trip for one week to Washington, D.C., along with an individual scholarship and a grant for the winning school or civic organization.

Our 2010 tour delegates are Eric Wright, 2010 YCA winner, North Gwinnett High School and John Brawley, 2009 Energy Bowl, Grayson High School. 

The next Washington Youth Tour is June 9-16, 2011.

More than 100 delegates from Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) recently explored the nation's capital on the 2010 Washington Youth Tour (WYT). 

Through the trip of a lifetime, delegates discovered how the electric cooperative movement began, learned about American history, visited legendary monuments and saw firsthand how effective leadership and community service can shape a nation.

Jackson EMC delegates John Brawley and Eric Wright were among Georgia’s brightest high school students sent on the 2010 leadership tour. 

The primary purpose of the WYT is to teach students the values every electric cooperative brings to the communities they serve and to promote civic involvement while teaching the students about U.S. history, government and careers in public service.

The 2010 WYT began with a kick-off banquet in Atlanta. WSB-TV weekend news anchor John Bachman served as master of ceremonies, and state Rep. Brooks Coleman, chairman of the Georgia House Education Committee, was keynote speaker.

Before departing for Washington, D.C., students and chaperones spent a day in Georgia doing team building exercises and touring the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s retreat.  Many of President Roosevelt’s important decisions took place at the Little White House, including the plan to bring electricity to rural America.

Once in D.C., the delegation visited sites such as the Washington Monument, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Capitol, the Washington National Cathedral, Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetery; as well as the Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korean, Iwo Jima, Vietnam Veterans and 9/11 Pentagon Memorials. Other highlights included touring the Smithsonian Institute and the Holocaust Museums, Union Station, National Archives, Ford Theatre and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

Delegate Wright said, “Our country’s history and its importance have made me much more aware and appreciative of the things I have and I will not take freedom for granted.”

The students took an evening riverboat cruise on the Potomac and visited Toby’s Dinner Theater in Baltimore, Md., where the group attended the play, “Hairspray.”

Students also gained perspective on today’s important issues through personal visits on Capitol Hill with Georgia’s representatives in the U.S. House and Senate.  Later they participated in National Youth Day and competed for the Annual Youth Leadership Council (YLC).

The chaperones and state peers selected Wright, Jackson EMC delegate, as one of the five finalists for YLC, a national leadership opportunity sponsored by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). 

At the end of the trip, Wright, Brawley and the other youth delegates, returned home with a beyond-the-classroom look of the nation's capitol, a better understanding and appreciation of the sacrifices made by others, and hundreds of new lifelong friends with whom they shared a journey of a lifetime experience.

“After participating in this trip, I’ve learned that trusting in others while having enough confidence to lead without being brash, can take you to great places,” John Brawley notes. “And I am more determined than ever to become a leader in the field or chemical or subatomic research.”  Wright plans to become a history teach and a coach and would like to open his own leadership academy for young students.

The Electric Cooperative Youth Tour has brought high school students to Washington, D.C. every June since the late 1950s.  Electric cooperatives select students from across the United States for this program.  Since 1964, EMCs nationwide have sponsored more than 40,000 high school students to spend a week in Washington, D.C.  Georgia has participated in the Youth Tour since 1965, and it is the premiere youth event for 38 of the 42 Georgia EMCs.

To learn about the tour's history, reconnect with fellow alumni or learn more about future opportunities, prospective participants and WYT alumni can visit www.youthtour.coop or Jackson EMC's Community page on Facebook.  Photos from this year’s tour are on the national Youth Tour Web site at http://photos.youthtour.org/2010-Youth-Tour.