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Contact:
Tracy Warren
Phone: 703-907-5746
Mobile: 703-517-3411

Brad Furr, board president, and Morgan Lashley, communications specialist, accept the Community Service Award for North Carolina EMC. Photo credit: Michael Lynch

ATLANTA, GEORGIA, February 15, 2010 — The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) today honored North Carolina Electric Cooperative Association with the Association’s National Community Service Award for Youth Programs. The statewide association received the award for “Bright Ideas,” an educational grants program administered by co-ops throughout the state, at NRECA’s 2010 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Since the inception of the Bright Ideas grants program in 1994, co-ops have awarded more than $6.5 million to deserving teachers in rural schools across the state to sponsor almost 5,900 classroom projects. In 2009, co-ops received nearly 2,000 applications and will collectively distribute $580,000.

Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation created the program, which was quickly adopted by all 25 North Carolina cooperatives. Grants have funded a wide range of projects in the humanities and sciences. In 2009, a grant from Cape Hatteras EMC allowed a librarian to bring Brandon Mull, author of the popular series Fable Haven, to the island for a week of public readings and events. 

A grant from Albemarle County EMC to Stephen Karle, a teacher at John A. Holmes High School, paid for the conversion of greenhouse on the school grounds into an alternative energy source.

“An investment in schools is a long-term investment in the community,” said F.E. “Wally” Wolski, president of the NRECA Board of Directors. “North Carolina’s electric cooperatives have touched the lives of nearly one million North Carolina students with Bright Ideas grants and, during this recession, help to fill a widening gap in rural education budgets.”

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 private, not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.

More than 6,000 representatives from cooperative electric utilities across the nation are attending the NRECA Annual Meeting, February 15-17, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, during which they will set NRECA’s legislative and organizational agenda for 2010. In addition to considering and acting upon policy resolutions, delegates receive reports from NRECA officials, hear addresses by key public figures and business experts, and attend panel sessions on major issues affecting electric cooperatives and their consumer owners.

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