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Students from 17 regional public schools will enjoy new opportunities this semester after Midwest Energy Cooperative awarded $30,476.20 in Strengthening Schools grants. The grants are funded with partnership dollars from Touchstone Energy Cooperative. A committee comprised of co-op members evaluated and scored 89 applications totaling more than $156,000, then determined the final awards without knowledge of the school, district or community. Committee members included [...]

‘Twas the night before Christmas when 70 mph winds whipped through Michigan, knocking down trees and power lines, and leaving thousands of Michigan residents without electricity. Collectively the windstorm resulted in nearly 120,000 outages for Michigan’s electric co-ops. “This event was more challenging than the Christmas ice storm of 2012,” commented Joe McElroy, safety and loss control director for the Michigan Electric Cooperative Association. [...]

After 24 years of editing and writing for Michigan Country Lines magazine, Gail Knudtson is moving on and plans to “spend more time with family and friends, travel as much as possible, do some volunteer work, and maybe get back to some freelance writing!” she says. After earning a journalism degree from MSU and seven years as a newsletter editor for the Michigan Chapter-National [...]

The Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-op Board of Directors has approved another year of participation in CoBank’s “Sharing Success” program, a $3 million fund that benefits co-ops and the charitable groups they support throughout America. CoBank is a nonprofit co-op that serves as a “bank for cooperatives” nationwide. Under this program, CoBank has matched contributions by PIE&G’s members (through its Operation Round Up/Communities [...]

Each year, over 4.5 million people in the U.S. are bitten by dogs, with one in five requiring medical attention. People most affected are senior citizens, children, postal workers, and utility workers. “We brought in a national expert in fall 2015 to train our co-op and municipal member employees on ways to prevent dog bites and attacks, but this is also information they can take [...]

The recent launch of gigabit speed service from its Midwest Connections subsidiary has resulted in more local, state and national media for Midwest Energy Cooperative as a leader in the rural broadband revolution. In November, rural broadband again hit the national scene as the cover story for RE Magazine, and featured an interview with Midwest CEO Bob Hance and other co-op leaders who are [...]