Youth Leadership is a family affair in Flower Mound

Every year, CoServ selects a group of deserving students based on their grade point average, extracurricular activities, and an essay. Judges weigh the applications without the names, solely looking at the criteria presented. Then, selected students go on an all-expenses-paid, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Washington, D.C.

The tour visits many of the nation’s top tourist sites, giving students a chance to learn about the inner workings of the U.S. government, its history, and its culture. Electric cooperatives across the country have been sending students on Youth Leadership Tour since 1965.

CoServ Member Julie Kluthe is part of that legacy and so are her two daughters. She was selected by a co-op in Iowa to go on YLT in 1988.  All these decades later, she remembers witnessing the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery, walking through the White House, touring the Smithsonian museums and even meeting her senator. She has a scrapbook full of mementos, photos and stickers she traded with others from across the country.

“We really became close to each other for that week,” Kluthe said. “We bonded over our shared experiences. You bill it as the experience of a lifetime, and it really is.”

In 2017, Julie’s daughter Anne, a junior at Flower Mound High School, was selected by CoServ to go. The trip sparked her interest in government policy.

“I knew policy affected our daily lives but I didn’t know what that meant, how that happened and what people were doing on the floor to create good policy,” Anne said.

She later majored in Environmental Studies at the University of Nebraska and is currently working in Wisconsin.