CASSOPOLIS – Some people spend a lifetime trying to get their great work of art published. Emily Demeter accomplished it by the fourth grade.

Emily won Midwest Energy Cooperative’s inaugural Safety Month Contest.

The daughter of Suzanne Avery of Sister Lakes, she is a student in Mrs. Doni Smith’s class at Sister Lakes Elementary.

To kick off the contest, Midwest Energy presented its hotline demonstration electrical safety program to all fourth grade students in the Cassopolis, Dowagiac and Marcellus school systems.

After the presentation, all students designed a poster depicting an electrical safety message.

Each classroom then selected one poster and the representative posters were all submitted to Midwest Energy Cooperative.

A team from the cooperative selected one winning poster from each of the three participating school systems, and from those three, Emily’s design was selected as the best overall.

Midwest Energy provided a pizza party and a field trip to the HealthWorks! Kids’ Museum in South Bend, Ind., for the students from the three winning classrooms.
Each student was also given a T-shirt bearing Emily’s winning design.

The design will also be used in future promotions of Midwest’s electrical safety programs.

“This was a great way for us to get our electrical safety message out in a fun and engaging new way,” said Nicole Barfell, Midwest Energy’s community development specialist. “We appreciate the support of our participating schools, and applaud all of the kids for the great and creative work they did.”

Midwest offers free electrical safety programs for schools, churches, civic groups, emergency response teams and other groups and organizations.

The programs are free and can be conducted right in your own facility and adapted to the length of your class or program period.

For more information or to schedule a program, please contact Barfell at (269) 445-1112.
Midwest Energy Cooperative is a member-owned electric utility providing electric distribution and an assortment of energy-related programs and services to more than 35,000 customers in 11 counties in southern Michigan and northern Indiana and Ohio.