For the fifth year in a row, Citizens has sponsored two area juniors to attend the Foundation for Rural Services Youth Tour in Washington DC. This year representatives, Emily Yenter and Katie Boehm were among 102 high school students from throughout the United States to attend the 17th Annual tour held
June 5 - 9, 2010. View photos here.

When asked about her experience Emily wrote “My roommate was from New Mexico, her name was Amanda Cross Smith, and we had a blast getting to know each other.  It was amazing meeting so many people from areas just like mine and seeing all of the similarities we shared.  One of the girls I met had graduating class of 5 students, which seemed so small compared to my soon to be 80 classmates at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser.  Some of my favorite places that we went to were the Newseum, Arlington Cemetery, the Capital, and all of the different monuments/memorials.  At the Newseum, there was a room specially dedicated to remembering 9/11.  In this room there was a 20 foot high wall that had tons of front page newspaper articles from around the world.  Each newspaper article hanging on the wall proclaimed to the world what had happen on that day in the United States.  Every place I went in DC, my eyes were opened to our history and the potential of what any person can do.  When Katie and I went to the Rayburn Building, we got to talk to Congressman David Obey's legislative assistant Brendan Rose.  He gave us an inside look at what Congressman Obey is doing to help rural areas during the Broadband plan.  Rural America is currently on the backburner for the Broadband plan, and as of now rural areas will only get 4 MGB of internet speed verses urban areas getting 100 MGB.  Obviously, rural areas will be getting internet that is 20 times slower than in cities.  Mr. Rose gave me and Katie a lot of ideas on how to help make rural areas needs stand out; and this coming week actually, Katie and I are attending Badger Girls State and we hope to apply what we learned in DC to Wisconsin.  Also, I learned a little bit about the Chetek Alert, it turns out that my hometown paper is kind of famous in Washington DC.  In Congressman Obey's office, when the staff is cutting out newspaper articles and they come across a Chetek Alert article, the person has to yell out "Chetek ALERT!"  It made me laugh a lot, and yet when we had said we were from Chetek and New Auburn, Katie and I did not have to explain where our towns are because they knew already . . . which shows they do care about little towns like ours."