Youth Tour: Win a Free Trip to D.C.

Each year, San Patricio Electric Cooperative sponsors two area high school students on the Government-in-Action Youth Tour in Washington D.C.  The all-expenses-paid trip serves as an opportunity for our students to learn more about the history of our great nation and connect with other students from across the United States. Each year, more than 1,500 students attend the Government-in-Action Youth Tour, which takes students to some of D.C.'s most popular monuments, museums and memorials.

While on the chaperoned trip, students experience a whirlwind tour of the nation’s capital, visiting the Washington National Cathedral, Arlington National Cemetery, Mount Vernon, Smithsonian Institution, memorials and more. Activities include learning about rural electrification, seeing a performance at the Kennedy Center, going on a boat cruise with dinner and dancing, and meeting elected officials. 

To be eligible, you must be a high school junior or senior and your parent(s) or legal guardian must be a member of San Patricio Electric Cooperative. Each year, SPEC holds an essay contest for interested students. Applicants must write a 300-500 word essay from a prompt provided by the co-op. The two students with the most outstanding essays win the FREE once-in-a-lifetime trip to the nation’s capital! 

About the Youth Tour

The Government-in-Action Youth Tour is a national cooperative initiative to send student’s to the nation’s capital. The program grew from the ideas of President Lyndon B. Johnson, an advocate of rural electrification and youth supporter. In 1957, when LBJ was still a Senator, he spoke at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) Annual Meeting. In his speech he declared that young people should be sent to the national capital “where they can actually see what the flag stands for and represents.”

Cooperatives across the nation soon got behind the idea and in 1964 created the first organized effort to send students to Washington D.C. for what is now known as the Government-in-Action Youth Tour. After more than 50 years, the Youth Tour has been able to send nearly 50,000 students from rural America to the nations’ capital.