Cumberland County is taking a unique approach to combat brain drain and encourage its young people to get involved with and stay in their community.

Alongside an internship program, the Cumberland County Civic Club is a fully staffed fiscal court formed by students from the local high school.

Its members take part in a variety of public service to help shape the community.

We've noticed for a while, several decades in Cumberland County, like a lot of rural Kentucky, that we're losing our youth, we're losing our best and brightest.

And you can blame that on any number of things.

But one of the things that we found was a primary problem is they didn't have a voice.

They didn't have a seat at the table.

Fortunately, here in Cumberland County, our fiscal court, all of the magistrates thereof gave the youth of our county not just one seat at the table, but multiple seats at the table.

The Cumberland County Civics Club and the Cumberland County interns are involved with a wide variety of things in our county.

They've helped with USDA commodity food distributions.

They helped with our first ever giveaway, a toy day where we gave away over $100,000 in brand new toys.

They helped with all of our Christmas parade.

Save hosted the first ever county trivia nights here in Cumberland County at our first Fridays events.

They have painted the courtroom.

They've put up a wall of remembrance and a wall of recognition.

They've cut down trees.

They've trimmed rose bushes.

They helped set up for court meetings.

They draft press releases.

They do it all.

And we're a small county.

And I know there's other counties out there and even more students.

We have a bunch of young minds in Cumberland County, and I'm so thankful that they have worked hard to make the civics club what it is and that we're getting all this attention and it's just kind of building and building as more and schools and counties hear about it.

And it's just exciting to see all the youth in Kentucky wanting to see leadership in the community and government creating programs like this to create interest in local government, to stop that, the brain drain.

And it's important to keep a relationship with older members, more experienced members in the youths to build that relationship, to move the ball forward.

Because if you didn't have that relationship, that I think would be productive.

Not a lot of people here are peers would go to government meetings, school board meetings, fiscal court meetings, and learn what was going on with our civics club here.

Now, in the last year, we've been able to really elevate that every single peer in our high school knows that if they want, they can help us or they can do their own civic engagement project.

They can start going to fiscal court meetings.

They can learn how to make a difference and get involved.

And that's something that is amazing for us to have because we haven't quite had that level of civic engagement before.

Additionally, their involvement in this program can highlight career pathways, thereby connecting students with local businesses, industries, civic leaders, and I think that would allow the community to showcase the viable career opportunities and the entrepreneurial potential that is available here in the county that would make them make them either stay here or return here once there, once they're done with college.

Let the youth of Cumberland County today design what Cumberland County looks like ten years, 20 years, or even five years down the road, so that then they've got some invested interest in it.

But I think with the group that we've got in the group that they will have when they replace all of us, I think we're setting ourselves up in a pretty good position.

I'd say so future leaders.

Indeed, the Cumberland County Civics Club is currently working on getting a splash pad set up for children in their community.