Convention of States’ Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) is more than just something you put on your résumé. It’s the gateway to a calling, a life-changing experience with ripple effects that very well may alter the course of history.
Every year, COS is honored to welcome a dozen or so burgeoning patriots into the organization for a nine-month internship focused on cultivating virtue, self-governance, and statesmanship within the next generation. And every year, we are astounded by the high-caliber young men and women who join our ranks. Committed to God, truth, justice, and the American way, these future leaders inspire us with hope for tomorrow, a much-needed source of optimism in these pressing times.
“We are in a very bad place right now,” acknowledged Video Media intern Emily Hamilton. “But the thing that gives me hope and the thing that I am optimistic about is that God always preserves a remnant, and being able to see that happening right now, being able to see people that love truth, that are not accepting the spirit of the age—whatever is popular at the moment—that’s what gives me hope. That’s what I’m excited and encouraged about.”
It was a common refrain. So often, it seems, young people—particularly young patriots—fall prey to the perception that they are alone amongst their peers. Like Elijah in the cave, they cry out in solitude and despair, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left….” To which God knowingly responds, “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
The Emerging Leaders Program serves as a reminder of that—a fitting aide-memoire that God's remnant still remains.
Take Social Media intern Kailee Zimmerman, for example. She recounted an incident in a public speaking class where she stood as the lone pro-life student in an abortion debate. Now, she said, she believes very strongly in surrounding oneself with like-minded believers and friends.
“I think that I got involved in the ELP at just the right time to give me some refreshing hope that I’m not the only one,” she expressed, “and that there [are] a lot of people that believe in America and love it and want to fight to preserve it. As I have been around here, I have seen that that group of people is bigger and bigger and bigger than I could have imagined.”
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Like so many others, Kailee is also guided by her faith. “I think America stepping away from faith is one of our biggest challenges,” she said.
Will Zwart, blockwalking intern, Maryland volunteer, and COS satirist, pointed out that the American Founding Fathers indeed imbued principles of faith into the very core of the nation. When asked what it would take for his generation to re-establish that understructure, he answered, “primarily, restoring fundamental principles and rebuilding the Judeo-Christian foundation.”
“John Adams himself said that [the American system of] government won’t function in any society but a moral one; it’s wholly inadequate for the society of any other,” he quoted. “We the People have the power, and as long as we are pursuing the ways of God and biblical governance, we can restore liberty in America.”
Therefore, even as we invest in the professional development of tomorrow’s leaders, it is equally important that we also invest in their spiritual and moral development.
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Right there to guide our interns through that all-important process is the ELP leadership team, including Reagan Green, his wife, Faith, and Kristen Stanciu, all of whom earned well-merited praise from this year’s class.
“I would just want to talk about Reagan, Faith, and Kristen,” commended HR intern Carissa Contreras when asked what she would say about the program. “They are one of the most influential groups I have ever encountered…. They really are the heart and soul of the ELP, and the way they run it is just so amazing. Not only are they there for you on a professional level, but they’re there for you on a personal level.”
“If I had one thing to say about all of them,” she added, “it would be [about] their faith to move mountains.”
Indeed, that faith seems to shine through the lives of every beneficiary of the 2023-2024 COS internship. Too often, young people in America are dismissed as a lost cause—the politically irredeemable. But every day, this faithful remnant proves the demoralized narrative wrong. Tomorrow’s leaders are not too far gone; the future is not so bleak as to shroud out all light. This rising generation is determined to enjoy the blessings of liberty, and through programs like the ELP, we are determined to equip them to achieve that goal.
As Sam Duerkop, grassroots intern for the North East Patriots and Union regions, put it, “Sometimes, it can be so hard, like, ‘What is there to do?’ But, being surrounded by all the people at Convention of States, who are doing, something has been such an encouragement…. I don’t know if we’ll see the rewards of what we’ve done in our lifetime, but we’ve still got to do it, and God calls us to do it.”
To learn more about this life-changing program and how you or someone you know can get involved, visit cosinternship.com today!
