CATHOLIC CITIZEN ESSAY CONTEST

01/30/2019

Council: 10019 - LEWISTON

Project Description:

It was at our first September meeting when PGK Robert Dumond made a motion to support the Supreme Council Essay contest this year. Members unanimously supported the motion and urged Robert to order the needed materials, which he did. He also contacted staff members at St. Dominic Academy for permission to urge students for their participation. This year’s theme for the Catholic Citizenship Essay Contest was, ‘How does your family keep its Catholic faith in action’. As an initiative for their work on this five hundred word essay, he proposed cash prizes for first, second and third place winners. The funds for this project had previously been accumulated by collecting five cent returnable bottles and cans.
As several weeks passed, Robert finally heard back from the eighth grade religion teacher, who told him that his entire class would be participating this year. This great news was brought back to the council members, now Robert needed to recruit volunteer judges to read and score an estimated thirty plus essays. That was the easy part. The hard part for the ten judges involved was to read and find worthy essayist. The process seemed to take forever, however, the last judge submitted his final results and the tabulation from all of the judges could begin. Robert made that part easy by using a spread sheet program to make all of the calculations. The results were remarkable with a tie for second place and a tie for third place.
The principal at St. Dom’s Academy was informed of the results and a presentation was scheduled after a student body Holy Mass on Jan. 23rd. The five winners were called: third place – Rodanthi Gammaitoni and Eadie Nadeau, second place – Noah Giradin and Laura Wong and first place winner – Sarah English. There was an enthusiastic applause from the middle school clergy, teachers and students in attendance.
Robert said that reading these essays was very revealing as to the state of our religious community and the great work that needs to be done to evangelize and educate our local Catholic brothers and sisters.