Juniors who are sons or daughters of Cotton Electric Cooperative employees and board members are not eligible to participate. 

Some schools listed may include students whose parents receive electric service from another electric cooperative. If their electric cooperative does not participate in Youth Tour, such students will be allowed to enter Cotton Electric Cooperative’s contest. If their cooperative sponsors a Youth Tour contest, those students have an option to choose between the two cooperatives. Students will be ineligible if they enter more than one essay or more than one contest.

CONTEST DETAILS

The contest is broken into two rounds and starts with the written letter portion. 

Writers of the Top 10 letters move to the second round, a live video interview. The question-and-answer video call between students and independent judges will be arranged by Cotton Electric.

The Top 2 students will be awarded an all-expense-paid trip to Washington D.C. in June 2025. The 3rd and 4th place students will be alternates and given the opportunity to attend Leadership Summit in March at OYE. 

Contest dates

Oct. 31, 2024         Contest opens for entries.
Jan. 16, 2025          Essay deadline – Essays must be submitted online by 3 p.m.
Feb. 4, 2025           Live video interviews of authors of Top 10 essays

Feb. 10, 2025         Winners are announced
Feb. 14, 2025         Leadership Summit winner info due

Mar. 17, 2025         Leadership Summit at OYE
June 13, 2025         Youth Tour Banquet, OKC (students, parents/guardians and cooperative staff)
June 14-19, 2025    Oklahoma Youth Tour trip to Washington, D.C.

CONTEST RULES

1. Applicants will write a professional letter to a local, state or federal elected official about a topic that is important to them. A template is available in the resources tab on the Youth Tour page. .
2. Fill out all required fields and upload the letter referenced above at www.cottonelectric.com/youthtour.
3. Deadline is 3 p.m., January 16, 2024 for uploading completed applications.
4. All submissions are made anonymous before submission to judges.
5. BE ORIGINAL!
6. Letters will be judged by the following criteria: Knowledge of subject, 40%; Originality, 30%; Composition, 10%; Grammar, 10%; and Spelling & Punctuation, 10%.
7. Independent judges will score the essays. The process will narrow the pool of candidates to 10.
8. In the second round of competition, the Top 10 students will be invited to participate in a live-video interview to discuss the essay and general cooperative knowledge with independent judges. Interview questions will be drawn from the reference materials listed on the Youth Tour page.
9. The two top presenters will be awarded an all-expense-paid trip (valued at $3,500 per student) to Washington D.C. in June 2024. 
10. The third and fourth place students will be alternates and provided an opportunity to attend Leadership Summit on March 17th at OYE.
11. Judges’ decisions throughout the process are final. 

Students selected and sponsored by Cotton Electric Cooperative are expected to participate in required preparatory activities related to Oklahoma Your Tour and the full duration of the student program, including group travel to and from Washington, D.C. The student experience has a program value of $3,500 per participant. While cancellations are unfortunate, cancellations received/processed 60-days prior to the day of registration are appreciated and needed to allow cooperatives to find alternate student participants.

Families of selected students who cancel less than 60-days prior to the day of registration, may be responsible for reimbursing the sponsoring cooperative up to 50% of the program value. No shows and families of selected students failing to notify their sponsoring cooperative of nonparticipation, may be held responsible for reimbursing 100% of the program value.

These links will take you to pages on our website or they will open PDFs. Applicants are encouraged to review these resources to write their letter and to prepare for the interview portion of the contest.

Professional Letter Template

7 Cooperative Principles 

Cotton Electric History

Co-op 101

Annual Report

For more information regarding the essay contest, call Cotton Electric at 580-875-3351 or email zyoung@cottonelectric.com.