After founding the Art of Debating Program and organizing a summer camp in partnership with PACT, I wanted to make an impact on my school’s local community as well. I initially entered the Khemka Social Impact Prize at my school and pitched my idea to organize debate training and support to state schools to help them organize their own debating clubs and offer debate training. My idea was noticed by my school’s social impact mentor, and she helped me develop my program by putting me in contact with the coordinator of the Thames Valley Learning Partnership (TVLP) Network. I was able to advertise a 6-week workshop program to TVLP schools and encourage students from many different state schools to sign up. Over the course of the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years, I have run two 6-week workshop programs and offered two sessions per week for students to learn from lectures, practice their public speaking skills, and receive feedback from experienced instructors.

In recognition of the success of my project, I received my School’s Birchall Prize for Community Engagement. In addition, my program was offered as one of the options for 11^th graders to fulfill their mandatory community engagement requirements.