Youth Tour Delegate puts his trip to work

Youth Tour delegates pose in Washington, DCGrow­ing young minds is some­thing York Elec­tric takes great pride in. By pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als and host­ing art con­tests for stu­dents of all ages, to award­ing over $12,000 in schol­ar­ships to local seniors each year to nom­i­nat­ing stu­dent del­e­gates to attend free trips to both our state and nation’s cap­i­tals, YEC is com­mit­ted to enrich­ing and sup­port­ing the lives of our future lead­ers.

One stu­dent that we have had the great oppor­tu­ni­ty to empow­er through edu­ca­tion and to watch his suc­cess unfold is Jor­dan Brown of Fort Mill. In the sum­mer of 2022, YEC sent Brown, along with two oth­er local high school juniors, on an all-expens­es-paid trip to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. where he had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tour mon­u­ments, memo­ri­als, muse­ums and the U.S. Capi­tol.

The most impact­ful part of Brown’s Wash­ing­ton Youth Tour expe­ri­ence, though, was the chance to speak with U.S. Sen­a­tors Tim Scott and Lind­sey Gra­ham, as well as his con­gress­man, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ralph Nor­man. Brown recalls, “I thor­ough­ly enjoyed being able to ask my leg­is­la­tors ques­tions and see that they were real peo­ple just like me. It made me want to become more polit­i­cal­ly active.”

Brown used his expe­ri­ence to become more polit­i­cal­ly involved, indeed. After turn­ing 18 this year and gain­ing the abil­i­ty to vote, Brown ral­lied some of his fel­low class­mates to host a vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve at his high school. As a result, Brown was able to reg­is­ter over 54 stu­dents to vote and to plant the seed of polit­i­cal involve­ment.

“This dri­ve was a great way for me to share the impor­tance of using your voice to enact change,” Brown says. “I look for­ward to doing more like this in the future.”

York Elec­tric cer­tain­ly looks for­ward to watch­ing Brown do just that and is excit­ed to see where his suc­cess­es take him.