Washington Youth Tour Writing Competition

Ping! Zing! Zap! Ding! “Finally my machine is finished!” exclaimed Lizzy. Lizzy had been working for the past year to create a device to let her travel between dimensions, and finally all her hard work had paid off. “Now to test it” she said in an excited voice. Lizzy presses the button and opens the hatch. As she steps inside she can’t help but feel ecstatic knowing that she would be the first person to discover different realms. Then, with the press of the big, yellow button at the bottom of her remote, Lizzy was off to discover some random unknown world.

After about five minutes, Lizzy had arrived in a place that she knew wasn’t going to be much fun at all; this world was dark. Even after spending only ten minutes in this new place, she could feel the amount of debt held by everyone that lived there. She decided to do a little research as to what had happened to the once vibrant place known as New York. Lizzy began asking the locals what had happened, and it seemed that every story was the same. “No one would listen to the electric cooperatives when they told us that we needed to conserve. We all thought they were after our money and were speaking nonsense when they would host public announcements about their whole Green Power Switch business. It wasn’t until it was too late that we discovered that electric cooperatives are non-profitable, voluntary organizations that are democratically run. We know now that they only wanted to help save us from this dark realm,” responds a passerby when Lizzy asks him how this happened. Lizzy had heard enough to know that it was time for her to leave, so she climbed back into her machine and decided to travel to the next dimension, hoping for a brighter outcome.

Finally, Lizzy had arrived at her next destination after what seemed like ages, still reflecting on the world she had just discovered. As Lizzy stepped outside she quickly recognized the location. She was standing in the same place she had previously been; however, this world seemed to have a much brighter way of living than she had ever seen. Every way she looked she saw nothing but smiling faces and happiness radiating off of everyone she came across. Lizzy had to know what their secret was to becoming such an amazing generation. She began asking different community members, and the best reply she received came from a young girl around the age of 18 who said, “It started about five years ago when our local electric cooperative hosted a public seminar about the outcome of “going green” with our energy choices. At first we all thought that it was nonsense, but as we kept listening we discovered how truly important it was and how much our cooperative really wanted to empower the community. We learned that cooperatives are composed of the people they serve and have volunteers working 24/7 to keep the organization top-notch by keeping things repaired and running efficiently. They also informed us that the future could have been a dark place if our community