Programs
Minnesota Rural Electric Association provides a variety of training to electric cooperatives, collaborates with vendor members to support cooperative needs, and engages with cooperative member-owner families through our annual Youth Tour.
Education
Minnesota Rural Electric Association provides member cooperatives with educational opportunities like new director training, leadership training, and more.
Collaboration
We collaborate with vendors and partners to support our member electric cooperatives.
Youth Tour
Our Youth Tour program, an opportunity for high school students to visit our nation’s capital, is one of many examples of how electric cooperatives support their local communities.
Education
Minnesota Rural Electric Association provides member cooperatives with educational opportunities like new director training, leadership training, and more.
Collaboration
We collaborate with vendors and partners to support our member electric cooperatives.
Youth Tour
Our Youth Tour program, an opportunity for high school students to visit our nation’s capital, is one of many examples of how electric cooperatives support their local communities.
Education
Minnesota Rural Electric Association provides member cooperatives with educational opportunities like new director training, leadership training, and more.
Collaboration
We collaborate with vendors and partners to support our member electric cooperatives.
Youth Tour
Our Youth Tour program, an opportunity for high school students to visit our nation’s capital, is one of many examples of how electric cooperatives support their local communities.
Youth Tour
The Electric Cooperative Youth Tour has brought high school students to Washington, D.C. for a week in June every year since the late 1950s. Students ages 16-18 are encouraged to apply and are selected for this program by their local electric cooperative. We believe that students should see their nation’s capital up close, learn about the political process and interact with their elected officials.
Students gain a personal understanding of American history and their role as a citizen by meeting their representative and senators. While student groups are organized at the state level, they all come together for Youth Day, where they get to meet each other and hear featured speakers who provide insight to the important roles electric cooperatives play in their communities.
Nearly 50,000 students from rural areas and small towns across America have participated in this program. Some of our Youth Tour alumni have gone on to design airplanes, to lead companies and to serve in the highest ranks of our government, including the U.S. Senate. Don’t be surprised if you run into a former Youth Tour participant who is a congressional aide on Capitol Hill. While several of our alumni work in Washington, you will find even more alumni in your own community.
If you want to be part of this fun (free!) week in Washington, please contact your local electric cooperative for additional information.
“The Rural Electric Youth Tour is a great avenue for youth to get involved both in the energy production and consumption of their community and in energy policy at a national level. It was a pleasure to meet with the students from southern Minnesota and to hear their thoughts on the renewable energy sources that will come to fruition during their lifetimes. I’m inspired by this future generation of leaders, and I hope to see more students in Washington as part of future Rural Electric Youth Tours.”
To be selected for the Washington D.C. youth tour, you must apply through the electric cooperative that serves your area of the state. Thirty-three of Minnesota’s electric cooperatives participate in the Washington Youth Tour. Each co-op has a unique application process and criteria to select the student or students to be sponsored as delegates. If you are a high school student age 16-18, please contact your local electric cooperative for eligibility requirements.
Member Education
We provide our members extensive training and education opportunities for every role at electric cooperatives. Our areas of training include leadership, management, financial, supervisory, customer service, technical best practices, monthly onsite safety meetings, apprenticeship certification, hands-on technical skills, hotline work, metering and more.
Education is one of the seven cooperative principles, and we strive to support Minnesota’s electric cooperatives with the knowledge they need to provide member-owners with reliable, safe, and affordable electricity.
Members can login to access MREA event calendar and registration.
Apprenticeship
Our lineworker apprenticeship program is an exciting opportunity to be a part of the solution for long-term grid reliability amid the clean energy transition.
From underground system design to understanding circuit fundamentals, apprentices learn the trade from experienced journeymen in the context of a member-owned, not-for profit electric cooperative.
For apprentices, this means something different than working for an investor-owned or municipal utility— it means being a part of a cooperative business model. Guided by the history of serving a local need, electric cooperatives prioritize community service, education, democratic governance, independence and autonomy.
Designed to meet the federal and state Department of Labor requirements, the MREA lineworker apprentice program is four years with the potential to test out in 1-2 years. Apprentices get hands-on learning under journeyman supervision. By the end of an apprenticeship, utility personnel are ready to safely construct, operate, and maintain the electric power system.
Those interested in pursuing a career in cooperative utility linework should have a sense of adventure, passion about their community, and no fear of heights. For more information or to enroll apprentices, contact us.
Vendor Members
Supporting Minnesota’s electric cooperatives would not be possible without our vendor members. Our vendor member program provides advertising and marketing opportunities along with conferences, trade shows and events for vendors to network with electric cooperative employees.
Click here to see our Membership Directory & Buyer’s Guide.
To order a copy, click here.
Interested in sponsoring, exhibiting, or advertising? Contact us.
Cooperative lineworkers helped electrify Guatemalan village
In mid-June, 14 lineworkers from Minnesota and Iowa traveled about 2,800 miles to transform a rural village, improving Guatemalan families’ lives for generations. The trip was part of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s International Program, which has been providing volunteers to illuminate villages and homes in impoverished countries around the world since 1962.
Minnesota and Iowa electric cooperatives were pleased to be able to send lineworker down to Guatemala for two weeks to help with this life-changing work. The village of Las Peñas, at an elevation of around 6,000 feet, is made up of about 35 homes scattered on the crests and flat areas of the mountainside, near the larger community of Jalapa in eastern Guatemala. Crews helped build more than three miles of powerlines and wired the homes for electric service.
The lineworkers who volunteered are used to working hard in some rough conditions, but this two-week trip in June pressed them to new limits. The ride to the village, after the staging area at a local ranch, was grueling. To get to the village, the team spent more than an hour bouncing over rocks, splashing through puddles, straddling washouts, spinning through ruts and sliding on the wet, red clay road that hadn’t even existed four weeks earlier. The rain, coming in sheets at times or as a lingering gray mist, kept the road slick and travel slow, and caused the team to walk the last mile into the village on a couple of days.
“The terrain was harder than I thought it was going to be,” Grant Kulzer, Stearns Electric Association, said. “It rained every night.”
All the work had to be done by hand without bucket trucks and other large equipment available in the states. However, they did have willing local residents. “They were eager to help,” Steve Dvergsten, Sioux Valley Electric, South Dakota, said of the Guatemalans. The crews were amazed at how the locals did the work that would be done by equipment back home, running the line down one side of the mountain and back up the other.
“The locals are amazing, and they go through this terrain like we walk on flat ground,” said Ryan Loomans, Nobles Cooperative Electric. “It’s amazing, we couldn’t have done it without them.”
The local municipality will now manage the lines and serve the village. The introduction of electricity will bring meaningful change to the community. In rural villages, boys often attend school while girls are kept home to do housework and food preparation. With electricity, girls can join the boys attending school. Additionally, electricity brings numerous other benefits including: better health, fewer open fires in kitchens, refrigeration of food, economic growth and more.
“Electricity is going to bring them a better education and a better life,” said Willy, one of the team’s translators.
Along with building the line, the crews also wired the houses with a couple of outlets and light bulbs. Some younger boys were excited just to have light, so they wouldn’t have to use candles, while another man in his 50s said he can’t wait to get a refrigerator, so he can keep food.
On the last day up the mountain, the crews met the locals outside the village for a small ceremony and to say their goodbyes.
The leader of the village spoke on behalf of the community, expressing their gratitude to the team. “Thank you to everyone who helped,” he said. “You bring happiness for the hope that we can do more now with electricity.” This work echoes of the time in the U.S. about 80-90 years ago when rural areas received power for the first time thanks to rural electric cooperatives. Life in America is significantly better today thanks to rural electrification.
One Guatemalan woman summed it up nicely: “I am grateful that you came here to visit. It is a grand day that you installed electricity here.”
List of volunteers
Ben Hoyt, Lake Country Power, MN
Steve Bronner, MiEnergy Cooperative, MN
Wiley Harris, Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative, MN
Ryan Loomans, Nobles Cooperative Electric, MN
Eric Dessner, People’s Energy Cooperative, MN
Steve Dvergsten, Sioux Valley Energy, MN
Grant Kulzer, Stearns Electric Association, MN
Jason Donnelly Allamakee-Clayton Electric Cooperative, IA
Brian Reidy, East-Central Iowa Rural Electric Cooperative, IA
Andy Koopmann, Eastern Iowa Light & Power Cooperative, IA
Bailey Bausch, Maquoketa Valley Electric Cooperative, IA
Tanner Dreier, Midland Power Cooperative, IA
Mike Berkenpas, North West Rural Electric Cooperative, IA
Hunter Venz, Prairie Energy Cooperative, IA
The trip was part of National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s International Program, which has been providing volunteers to illuminate villages and homes in impoverished countries around the world since 1962. The program has been working in Guatemala since 2011 and volunteer workers have brought electricity to more than 7,000 people in rural communities. The teams that went on behalf of all of Minnesota’s and Iowa’s electric cooperatives couldn’t have done the work without the generosity of many donors, vendors, cooperatives and individuals who wanted to support the work.
The Minnesota Rural Electric Association, along with Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives, helped organize the trip. You can see photos and videos from the trip if you join the dedicated Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2094274217615477/), “2024 Powering a Brighter Future in Guatemala.”
