OEC’s 2024 Youth Tour wrapped June 21 and set an all-time record for the number of cooperatives participating in the program. 50 student delegates from 20 Ohio cooperatives and 1 West Virginia co-op (Harrison REA), descended on the nation’s capital for a week-long, all expenses paid, educational trip to Washington D.C.
New this year, all Youth Tour delegates from across the country, approximately 2,200, stayed under one roof at The Gaylord at National Harbor. OEC's Youth Tour Director Missy Kidwell, along with other volunteer chaperones, hosted the delegates for an itinerary packed full of iconic Washington D.C. sites.
• Flight 93 Memorial, Pennsylvania
• Gettysburg Battlefield, Maryland
• Potomac River Boat Dinner Cruise
• U.S. Capitol Building
• Legislator Visits
• Steven F. Udvar Hazy Air & Space Center
• World War II Memorial
• Korean War Memorial
• Vietnam War Memorial
• Iwo Jima Sunset Parade
• Library of Congress
• The U.S. Supreme Court
• The White House
• National 9/11-Pentagon Memorial
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Arlington National Cemetery
• Natural History & American History Museums
• National Archives
• Washington Monument
• Jefferson Memorial
• Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial
Youth Tour and Youth Leadership Council participants are high school sophomores and juniors living on cooperative lines.
For more than 50 years, high school students from across the nation have gathered in Washington, D.C., for the trip of a lifetime, courtesy of their local sponsoring electric cooperatives, their state association, and the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association. Youth Tour gives students the opportunity to explore our nation’s capital, meet with elected officials who represent their hometowns, get to know other cooperative students from across the country, and learn about the electric co-op network.
Each Youth Tour participant has the opportunity to be selected as the one person to represent their state on NRECA’s Youth Leadership Council (YLC). If elected by their fellow Youth Tour delegates, a state YLC representative will deliver a speech for their sponsoring co-op’s board of directors, work with their co-op on October Co-op Month projects, speak at their co-op’s annual meeting, and much more.
