By Dan May
Rotary Club of Orange
Dan May
The Rotary Club of Orange collaborates and sponsors multiple events and activities with school-age youth. Interacting with students from kindergarten through high school is one of our most satisfying and enjoyable endeavors. The Rotary motto of ‘Service above Self” is incorporated in all, and we hope that it fosters community and civic engagement in future generations.
An event on Aug. 16 at Case Memorial Library in Orange is a prime example of how the next generation can truly engage both with each other and community needs. The event was called the 2025 Speech Spotlight Conference and was organized by our affiliated community Interact Club – Connecticut Speech and Action. Interact clubs are student-led clubs affiliated with a sponsoring Rotary Club, typically at high schools.
CTSA is organized and run as a collective primarily by students from Amity, Hamden Hall and Hopkins high schools. It might crudely be identified as an outgrowth or updated version of traditional high school debate teams. However, in this modern era, its virtual reach extends to more than 700 members and followers at schools across the Northeast, as well as internationally. More importantly, its mission is to extend educational discourse (i.e. debate) to intentional community service. Their website at ctspeechandaction.org describes some of their activities and goals.
Each fall CTSA hosts a “Speech Spotlight” public speaking competition and later participates in multiple other pubic speaking tournaments around the region. From these, a main social issue is identified by the club members for a targeted social activism project, with follow-up activities and service activities incorporated across their wide network of schools.
In the spring, a follow-up conference called the Solvathon Conference highlights some of the approaches developed to bring real change to their schools and/or communities.
The concept is fairly simple, but also extraordinary. Their mantra is that debate tournaments should not end with mere words and dust-gathering trophies.
This third annual Speech Spotlight was a competitive event with about 20 presenters aged 13 to 20 from schools from Rhode Island and Connecticut. It had a recommended slam poetry format on public policy topics. Over 50 people attended. Judges included the state poet laureate, a local poet, a legislative aide from Hartford, a nonprofit consultant and the press secretary from the state comptroller’s office.
The day was remarkably entertaining, educational and thought-provoking. The Rotary Club was proud to host it; the organizing Interact students and the competitors outdid themselves this year. Rotary-provided prize money rewards both the winners and supports their service projects in their home schools and communities.
This uplifting event raised my confidence in this next generation, even as several of the speeches uncomfortably addressed the apparent passivity of the generations in charge. The winner was a rising senior from Wilton with the presentation “The Monsters you Made,” asking how parents readily protect children from imagined monsters under the bed but fail to address those walking around in broad daylight and littering social media. I’m not sure if that will emerge as this year’s ongoing theme across the CTSA network, but it is a topic that merits thoughtful consideration by all ages. It would be great to see how these young emerging leaders might address it at their next Solvathon.
Dan May is the president of the Rotary Club of Orange.