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Youth Leadership Summit

Each year more than 40 high school juniors from 22 electric cooperatives across the state attend the Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association’s annual Youth Leadership Summit in March. The annual summit teaches students how important electric cooperatives are to Tennessee’s rural communities and provides them an opportunity to see the Capitol and legislative process.

Through a highly selective process, local electric cooperatives, along with school officials and guidance counselors, chose participants based on their interest in government and strong leadership abilities. “Leadership: The Wave of the Future” was the theme of the 2011 summit hosted by TECA and funded in part by the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation, a not-for-profit cooperative financing institute that provides an independent source of funding to member cooperatives nationwide.

Each year, students meet their state legislators, sit in on House and Senate committee meetings, participate in leadership-building activities at a Nashville-area YMCA camp, attend a Nashville Predators hockey game and enjoy a night-time tour of Tennessee’s capital city.