In this season of giving, Oklahoma’s electric cooperatives light up lives, at home and abroad. Farmers in the mountainous region of Alta Verapaz in north-central Guatemala have their homes and farming structures fully equipped to safely receive electricity for the first time, just in time for Christmas.

Volunteers from Oklahoma’s electric cooperatives, as well as from cooperatives in Colorado and Arkansas, recently returned from a 14-day mission. IEC journeyman lineman Josh Stocum was chosen for the humanitarian trip. The project – which is a partnership between the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) philanthropic arm, NRECA International, and Heifer International – consisted of conducting internal wiring of approximately 200 homes and farming structures in 38 villages.

Volunteers installed breaker boxes, light sockets, outlets and switches as well as meters on concrete poles outside of the homes.

The mission is estimated to empower nearly 1,200 farmers and their families to increase incomes and economic opportunity, improve quality of life and enable agricultural communities to thrive.

Click here to see an interview Tulsa's Fox23 aired with Stocum when he arrived back in Oklahoma.