Packing 15K Meals for Families in Need and Serving Youth

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Recently, members from twenty clubs in Rotary Southeast PA District gathered together to pack 15,000 meals for individuals and families in need at Rise Against Hunger and heard the Finalists for the Roger Taylor Four-way Speech Contest.

Rise Against Hunger’s mission to help underserved people worldwide achieve food security and resilience through nutrition, education and economic empowerment.

This video highlights the work of Rotary volunteers packing meals and Speech Contest.

The Rotary Speech Contest is a competition for high schoolers to illustrate the Rotary Four-Way Test. Students prepare and delivery a five to seven minute speech. The test is to ask the question when making decisions: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned? The speech contest helps students by nurturing ethical decision making, developing writing and public speaking skills, and empowering advocacy for causes they care about. It is free for students to enter and the top winners receive cash prizes.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania District annually works with local clubs to select and advance students for the competition, named the Roger Taylor Rotary Speech Contest. Roger Taylor, who died in 2022, worked tirelessly to encourage students to apply to the competition. Recent winners of the contests spoke about diverse topics as gun violence, discrimination, and climate change. The finalists of the competition present their speech at the annual Rotary District Conference before hundreds of people.

This years winners were: First Place, Ovia Gopinath from Garnet Valley High School. Second Place, Bhuvi Gupta from Lower Merion High School. Third Place, Tasfia Taylor Rashid from Nazareth Academy High School.

Congratulations to all the students who participated!