Thank you to Susan Rogers for sharing this Rotary story:
I’ve been running the Young Writer competition for District for 5 years, and despite there being some excellent submissions, we unfortunately haven’t had any National placings … until this year, and we have two!
Summer Jennings, sponsored by Skipton Craven came 3rd in the Junior group and Esther Derbridge sponsored by Settle came 3rd in the Intermediate group. Megan Graham, sponsored by Leeds Roundhay received a certificate for being a National finalist in the senior group. 21 Districts participated in the competition this year.
In the photo, from left to right, are Sam Hart (the Headmaster of Giggleswick School), Dr Colin Renwick (the new President of Settle Rotary Club), Esther Derbridge, and Rosie San Jose (English teacher at Giggleswick) who organised the competition in the school. Thanks go to all the Rotarians who organised the competition for their clubs.
The task this year was to produce a written or typed story entitled, ‘Peace’. The written entry could be fiction or non-fiction, prose, or a poem, as long as the piece related to the theme.
Clubs run the competition locally and then send their winners for each of 3 age categories to me and I organise the judging panel and submission of the 3 winners to RGBI. This year there were 6 judges, a mix of Rotarians (in clubs not competing!) and people from a writing group I used to belong to. Many thanks to the judges for also helping out with the competition.
It is not a difficult competition for clubs to organise as entries can be received by email, a judging panel formed within the club and the winning entries sent on electronically, so hopefully there will be more clubs giving it a whirl this Rotary year. The theme for 2023 / 2024 is ‘Rebuilding’.