Students Learn About Cooperatives, Government During Montgomery Youth Tour
Each year, high school juniors representing Alabama’s electric cooperatives converge on Montgomery for a chance to learn leadership skills, see how their government works and make connections with peers from around the state.
The Alabama Rural Electric Association hosts the Montgomery Youth Tour, and around 150 students made the journey to the state’s capital March 13-15. South Alabama Electric Cooperative sent 14 students to the 2024 youth tour.
While in Montgomery, students learned how cooperatives work, spoke with elected officials, toured historic sites and participated in leadership and team-building activities.
To be chosen to participate in the tour, students from local high schools within SAEC’s service areas in Pike, Coffee and Crenshaw counties apply, write an essay and are interviewed. From those teens selected to travel to Montgomery, SAEC chooses 2 students to also attend the National Rural Electric Youth Tour in Washington, D.C., in June.
Taking The Tour
Joy Schwarte and Savannah Edgar will represent SAEC in Washington, D.C. The high school juniors said the trip to Montgomery showed them what they could do in the future if they work with others to better their home state and their communities.
“We just connected because we were all there for the same reason, to grow as leaders,” says Schwarte, 17, who attends Pike Liberal Arts School.
Edgar, 16, attends Highland Home High School and says the roster of guest speakers featured during the Montgomery Youth Tour resonated with her, especially one speaker’s message of how life never really goes according to plan.
“I’ve had so many ups and downs, and if I looked at myself in ninth grade and where I am now, I would have never been able to imagine myself here,” Edgar says.
Schwarte says the speakers emphasized the need to think “outside the box” to solve problems. “You have to be flexible, and you have to learn to compromise,” she says.
Along with hearing from motivational speakers, while they were in Montgomery students participated in games designed to teach them how cooperatives work and about financial literacy and teamwork.
Learning how the state and federal governments can impact the daily lives of individuals was eye-opening, Schwarte says. Also, she says she learned how SAEC betters the communities it serves in ways other than providing electricity, and it made her realize the importance of individuals helping their communities.
“I want to be a mechanical engineer, and I wanted to do that before this and I still want to do that now,” Schwarte says. “But I think this has helped me realize that it takes so many people to make something great work. It’s not just by yourself, and so I want to be part of a team now when I grow up not just to do something I like but something that’s going to impact a community.”
Edgar says the experience makes her think twice about leaving her home state once she has completed her education.
“Being from a small town, I’ve always kind of just wanted to get out,” she says. “Going on this trip and hearing all the amazing things about Alabama, I’ve come to realize I really love my home and my community and how it’s affected me growing up. I just want to be able to give back to that.”
Nearly 60 Alabama students will go to Washington, D.C., for the weeklong National Rural Electric Youth Tour, joining more than 1,800 students from across the nation. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Alabama Rural Electric Association and local electric cooperatives sponsor the national youth tour.
Supporting Tomorrow’s Leaders
The youth tour engages young people who want to learn through experiences outside of the classroom.
“You’re creating the leaders of tomorrow,” says SAEC Vice President of Member Services Andy Kimbro. “They get to interact with other like-minded students wanting to be leaders, wanting to make things better in their community. Some of them do this and do not really understand the magnitude of how it is going to affect them.”
Kimbro hopes the experience will give students a better understanding of electric cooperatives as a business model, the issues faced by cooperatives, how cooperatives deliver electricity and the cost behind it.
“It is a great opportunity, the way we see it, to educate those students on what a cooperative is but also how to be a better citizen for the community that you live in,” he says.
Today’s young people are often seen as disconnected from the real world, but Kimbro says the students involved in the youth tour never fail to impress with their desire to learn.
“By the time they are finished, they come out with a new energy,” Kimbro says. “They want to make a difference.”