Pennyrile RECC
A Cure For Cynicism
April 1998
To listen to
Haley Fishburn, a senior at Christian County High School in
Hopkinsville, is to take a vacation from cynicism.
In a speech at
last year’s annual meeting of the Kentucky Association of Electric
Cooperatives she said, “Many times, even adults question their
capability to do anything and that’s precisely what is wrong with
America today. Everyone believes they’re too small to do anything
alone and no one realizes that if just one person will take a stand,
others will join.”
Her speech came
as a result of being selected as one of four students to receive an
all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., from Pennyrile Rural
Electric Cooperative, the consumer-owned utility that provides
electricity for 40,000 homes and businesses in nine counties of
southwest Kentucky.
The most
refreshing aspect of her speech was that there are thousands more
like her all over the country. I got to see them regularly several
years ago when I worked in Washington, D.C., with the National Rural
Electric Cooperative Association. Among my duties there was helping
with the Rural Electric Youth Tour, which brought a thousand high
school students to the nation’s capital each summer for a week of
touring, meeting with elected officials, making new friends, and
generally, as Fishburn says, “expanding our horizons.”
Spending time
with those students offered an uplifting view of people you don’t
always get in your day-to-day work and play. It’s a view you
certainly don’t get much of from the mass media. The students’
enthusiasm and idealism could be called naive but, good grief,
without those forms of optimism our country and society would surely
fall apart. Maybe the truly naive ones are those of us who take
darker views of our people and institutions.
At Pennyrile
Rural Electric Co-op, Manager Quentis Fuqua praises the utility’s
youth program for “kindling the knowledge and friendship of future
leaders on the cooperative way of doing business. This is another
way that we can support the educational process.”
Each year,
Pennyrile works with area high schools to choose 12 students to
attend a two-day visit to Frankfort, learning about state government
with some 75 other students from electric co-ops across Kentucky.
Pennyrile selects four of those 12 students to attend the Washington
Youth Tour.
Fuqua says, “After
they come back from meeting with their senators and representatives
and seeing firsthand how policy is made, that’s when the
adrenaline starts to flow and when we see the most excitement. They
come back really vibrant.”
Another part of
Fishburn’s speech last fall helps explain the success of the rural
electric youth programs, and maybe offers a larger lesson in how to
get the best out of students. Describing the meetings with the
elected officials, she said, “We weren’t treated like high
school students. We were treated like citizens of this country.”-Paul
Wesslund |
