Last night the friends & families of the children of Windsor enjoyed hearing their young offspring giving presentations to a packed house, delivering them better than most adults!

Youth Speaks is a National Rotary competition where a team of 3 give a 10 minute presentation on their chosen topic. Each section chairing, speaking & vote of thanks is judged by a panel of 3, the marks totted up, prizes awarded and entry into the next round given to a winning Senior & Intermediate team.

The Senior teams led the way:
• Windsor Girls School B “The Importance of Our Local Heritage”
• Windsor Boys School A “Should we be prepared to sacrifice privacy to advance national security?”
• Brigidine School “Humour is essential to life”
• Windsor Boys School B “World Hunger”
• Windsor Girls School A “Mental Health: Do We Really Understand?”

Followed by the Intermediates:
• Trevelyan Middle School “Is Superman so super?”
• St Edward’s Royal Free Ecumenical Middle School B “Be Yourself”
• St Edward’s Royal Free Ecumenical Middle School A “Something Old Something New”

Then our judges had to make some very hard decisions! Seniors chaired by Joe Sparks, Head Teacher of The Green Room School Windsor with fellow judges Reverend Louise Brown and author Stuart Young. Intermediates were led by retired Head Teacher Mary Stock with Mary Fraser of Poppy Fields & Lynette Eaborn a Marketing & PR Consultant.

It was a close run competition, as it is every year, with the Intermediates getting stronger & stronger as the years go by… giving us older folk great hope for the future… if all young people could present as these young volunteers did last night, UK plc would be in great hands.

Please encourage your young people to put their hands up for Youth Speaks and join school debating classes, it will do them and us the world of good.

To our winners…

The Senior competition was won by Windsor Girls School A “Mental Health: Do We Really Understand?” Chaired by Niamh Eastabrooke, delivered by Celeste Denyer & summed up by Phoebe Pearson-Hall.

George Prents, the chair of Windsor Boys A team was voted best senior speaker, letting his eyebrows do the talking, I’m sure I heard him say “Thank you Miss Moneypenny!” as he took his prize from Reverend Louise 😉

The Intermediate competition was won by Trevelyn, taking the 5 year crown from St Edward’s with a presentation entitled “Is Superman so super?”. Michael Smith (speaker) was Molly Kemp’s (chair) hero and Ginny Davis gave the Vote of Thanks. Michael was also the judge’s hero, voted best speaker and doubling up on his prize fund!

Thank you to all the schools that took part and for my Rotary Club members for helping out… we even managed to sell 4 Rotary Advent Calendars on the night… Waterstone’s are now stocking our calendars in town… perhaps each of our winners will spend their prize money on some calendars rather than books… then again!

Thank you.

Jon Davey
Rotarian – Youth Speaks Organiser