Sophomore Hannah Harrington received word recently that she was chosen as the State of Vermont winner of the Voice of Democracy Oral Essay Contest sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.In addition to a prize of $1,000, Harrington will receive an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. in April where she will compete with the winners of the other 49 states for a $30,000 college scholarship. The highlight of the trip is an opportunity to meet President of the United States Barak Obama.
Harrington said she was thrilled to win the competition and have the chance to meet the new president. She wrote her essay on how impressed she was with her first trip to the nation’s capital in seventh grade and how moving she found the memorials and monuments. The main point of her essay she said was “how veterans have done so much and sacrificed so much to ensure that the people in my generation have the opportunities that they do today.” Woven into her essay were reflections on the American Revolution and the early days of the democracy. She recorded her essay using GarageBand, burned a CD, and sent it off to the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, little dreaming she would win.
“I received a lot of encouragement from the local VFW people,” she said, “and I am very grateful to them.”
Created in 1947, the Voice of Democracy (VOD) scholarship program is an audio-essay contest for high school students in grades 9-12 that annually provides more than $3 million in scholarships.
The VOD program is endorsed by the National Association of Secondary School Principals' contest criteria and is designed to foster patriotism by allowing students the opportunity to voice their opinion in a three- to five-minute essay based on an annual theme.
