February is one of our favorite months of the year.
This month, the Electric Cooperatives of Mississippi (ECM) is hosting 84 high school juniors from all around the state for our
Cooperative Leaders Workshop.
The delegates will spend three days in Jackson learning about leadership and team building. They will also tour the state capitol and meet their state legislators.
Speaking of state lawmakers, our cover star this month happens to be a member of that influential political body.
And that’s no coincidence.
District 9 State Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd of Oxford spent time telling us about her career journey to the state Legislature. Part of her career origin story is also the origin of ECM’s Cooperative Youth Leaders program.
Boyd was the state’s first Cooperative Youth Leaders delegate.
In 1986, when Boyd was a junior in high school, she was asked by her family’s cooperative — North East Mississippi EPA — to attend the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) Youth Tour in D.C. and to come back and report to Mississippi co-op leaders why the state should participate in the national program.
Boyd did just that, and ECM has participated in the NRECA program ever since.
Before the delegates are picked by their sponsoring electric co-ops for inclusion in the program, they attend a Cooperative University put on by the cooperative.
The Cooperative University teaches the students the value of the cooperative business model and the impact electric cooperatives have on their lives and their communities.
The Cooperative University concept started out with one co-op creating the program and sharing with a few others in 2006. Following strategic planning by ECM’s board of directors to encourage other co-ops to put on the
event, 19 electric co-ops now hold
Cooperative Universities.
Following the Cooperative University, delegates are chosen to attend the February workshop in Jackson and to go on an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. in June. The sponsoring electric co-ops pay for the trips to Jackson and D.C.
The youth of Mississippi are the future of Mississippi.
Electric cooperatives hope to inspire delegates to lead in some way, so they can give back to the communities that nurtured them.
The delegates might not become a state lawmaker like Boyd, but, hopefully, what they learn in our Cooperative Youth Leaders program is something they can use to make positive change — however small or large — in their community and home state.
We hope you enjoy the issue.
