Our Community Stories
WPS helps local communities because we believe "It's Worth the Energy." When we share our time, knowledge and resources, we help sustain our communities and enrich our neighbors' lives. Here are some examples.
- Helping Boy Scouts "Be Prepared" Since 1952
- Inspiring the Future at Franklin Middle School
- Distributing Homes for Wood Ducks
- Lending a Hand to Project Heat's On
Helping Boy Scouts "Be Prepared" Since 1952
Every year, WPS offers Electricity Merit Badge Clinics. The clinics are popular, because it's hard to earn the Electricity Merit Badge without proper guidance and instruction. Several weeks before the clinics, kits and materials introduce the scouts to the topic of electricity. The scouts are asked to make five things at home, such as a simple electromagnet, and they're asked to conduct an electric safety inspection in their home.
During the clinic, line electricians, engineers and other WPS volunteers help the scouts learn:
- How to read an electric meter and calculate a bill
- How to draw floor plans of a typical house showing various electrical symbols,
- Why a fuse blows and how to safely change one,
- What happens when you overload a household circuit,
- How to rescue a person in contact with a live wire in the home
- How to administer proper first-aid treatment
Over the last 57 years, WPS has helped more than 3,000 Boy Scouts earn their Electricity Merit Badge.
Inspiring the Future at Franklin Middle School
WPS and Franklin Middle School, in Green Bay, have partnered together for students for more than 20 years. It's one of the longest-lasting business-education partnerships in the Greater Green Bay Area.
WPS employees share their experience of work and education with Franklin's diverse student body of 765 students, more than half qualifying for low-income assistance.
Franklin students visit WPS, where they job-shadow employees for a day. Employees go to the school to teach special classes, including "Why Math Is Important, "Geography Days" and "The Economics of Staying in School."
And for a few weeks each spring, Franklin students' artwork is displayed in the WPS lunchroom. The exhibit is celebrated with a reception for students and parents. And several pieces of art are chosen to be framed and hung in the WPS offices until the next year.
The Franklin Middle School art show began because WPS and the school believed it was important to showcase the students' art outside the school building.
Linda Jaworski-Pecht, the art teacher behind the art show since it began, explains the art show offers students "a way to see their art through the eyes of someone besides their parents and teachers."
"It gives them a special environment for their art, because they get to leave the school campus and see their art in a professional way."
Distributing Homes for Wood Ducks
Each spring, WPS distributes hundreds of wood duck houses throughout north-central Wisconsin. Environmentally focused residents donate $10 to Ducks Unlimited, and in exchange receive a wood duck house and can sign up a child for free for the Ducks Unlimited Greenwing program.
WPS partners with Ducks Unlimited and McNaughton Correctional Facility, which builds the wood duck houses. The aim is to provide homes for wood ducks and to keep kids involved in the great outdoors.
Lending a Hand to Project Heat's On
Project Heat's On makes sure limited-income homeowners — seniors or adults with disabilities — have a safe heating system in their home for the winter. For nearly 20 years, on the first Saturday in October, members of the Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 400 have volunteered to inspect and clean heating systems, change furnace filters, inspect smoke alarms and replace alarms or batteries.
And now Project Heat's On has expanded, thanks to WPS volunteers. WPS employees and family members, including members of its Local 310 International Union of Operating Engineers, put plastic sheeting on drafty windows; install weather stripping on windows and doors; screw in new, energy-efficient light bulbs' and insulate electrical outlets. They increase the homeowner's comfort and help control energy bills.
It's likely that Project Heat's On has saved 24 lives. Cracked heat exchangers and other defects were found and repaired at no cost to the homeowner — eliminating deadly carbon monoxide poisoning that could have occurred if those heating systems had been turned on for the winter.