Participating as Planters EMC delegates on the 2009 Washington Youth Tour are, from left, Taylor Meadows, Ansley Hickman and Rachel Welch. (Photo contributed by Phillip Vullo; photo illustration by Steve Jacobs) More than 100 of Georgia's brightest students recently returned from the 2009 Washington Youth Tour, a leadership program sponsored by the electric membership cooperatives

EMCs) in Georgia, including Planters EMC.

At the end of the 7-day trip, held June 11-18, the select group of youth delegates returned home with a firsthand look of the nation's capital, a better understanding and appreciation of the sacrifices made by others to ensure their freedom and hundreds of new friends who have the shared experience of the leadership program.

The Youth Tour is an annual event that teaches students about U.S. history, government and careers in public service. The primary purpose of the Tour is to teach students the values every electric cooperative brings to the communities they serve and to promote civic involvement.

"Sponsoring the Youth Tour and giving young people the opportunity to view our government and nation's capital on a personal level is extremely important," says Matt Brinson, general manager of Planters EMC, which sponsored three delegates on this year's tour including Jenkins County High School senior Rachel Welch, daughter of Ron and Tina Welch; Bulloch Academy senior Ansley Hickman, daughter of Terry and Alane Hickman; and Edmund Burke Academy senior Taylor Meadows, daughter of Ed and Lynne' Meadows.

"These students will be leaders in their communities in the years ahead, and it's important to deliver the message that public service is noble and needed in order for our communities and country to grow and prosper" says Brinson.

Teacher chaperone Twilya Toombs, a school counselor and cheerleading coach at Jasper County High School, agrees the nation is in good hands with the emergence of these young leaders.

"I know that with the delegates taken on this trip that our future will be okay," she says. "These delegates were respectful, patient, diverse, intelligent, energetic and competitive. They have changed my outlook on students, and their parents should be applauded."

The 2009 Youth Tour began June 11 in Atlanta. Before departing for Washington, D.C., the group visited FDR's Little White House in Warm Springs. After arriving in D.C., they toured the Supreme Court, the U.S. Capitol, the Washington National Cathedral, Mount Vernon, the FDR, Jefferson, Lincoln, Korean and Vietnam Veterans memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.

Georgia's youth delegates also had the chance to gain first-hand insights into today's most important issues through personal visits with their congressional delegations on Capitol Hill including Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and U.S. Representatives John Barrow, Sanford Bishop, Paul Broun, Nathan Deal, Jack Kingston, Tom Price and Lynn Westmoreland.

For the first time, students were able to see the new Pentagon Memorial dedicated to the memory of the 184 lives lost when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Other highlights included visits to the Hard Rock Café, the Kennedy Center and Toby's Dinner Theater in Baltimore, Md., where the group attended the play, "Beauty and the Beast."

Since 1964, Georgia's EMCs have sponsored more than 40,000 high school students to spend a week in Washington, D.C. to see historic monuments and memorials and to watch history unfold on Capitol Hill.

Planters EMC is a memberowned cooperative providing electricity and related services to more than 12,000 member-owners in Jenkins, Burke Screven, Bulloch, Effingham, Emanuel and Richmond counties.

Through a statewide network, Georgia's EMCs provide electricity and related services to four million people, nearly half of Georgia's population, across 73 percent of the state's land area. Georgia's 42 electric membership corporations serve more customers than any other state network of EMCs in the nation.