DAR Good Citizens
Dianna Baker-Hoye, Chairman
The Good Citizen Award
is intended to encourage and reward
outstanding youth who exhibit the qualities
of dependability, service, leadership and
patriotism in their homes, schools and
communities. Honoring our high school
seniors as Good Citizens is a very important
way that our chapters promote education and
patriotism.
The program is open to
high school seniors in accredited public or
private schools. It is important that all
students are allowed the opportunity to
participate, so please consider providing the
information to many schools in your area – not
only the city or town where your chapter
meets. Coordinate with the other chapters near
you to decide who will distribute materials to
which schools. Let’s make it a goal to cover
every high school in our state!
Remember that each
school may honor only one senior per year as
its DAR Good Citizen. Students selected by
their school have the option to participate in
the scholarship essay contest, but it is not
required.
Begin by accessing the
needed forms on the national committee
website: https://www.dar.org/members/committees/national-committees/dar-good-citizens/forms.
Read through these carefully, as there is a
lot of information and many specifics of how
to pass along this information to schools. All
forms are writable and savable, allowing you
to fill in your chapter contact information
before printing hard copies for schools, or
before emailing the information. All forms
(except the Scholarship Essay Instructions)
can be sent electronically to the schools if
preferred, making it even easier to get the
information to many schools. The Scholarship
Essay Instructions includes the essay title
and focus question that is not to be opened
until the essay is administered to the student
under the supervision of a school faculty
member or a DAR member, therefore this one
form must be hand delivered to participating
schools. Remember that the essay focus
question changes each year, so it is vital
that you double check to make sure you are
distributing this year’s form.
Set your chapter
deadline early enough to allow for the
collection of materials and judging.
November 1st is suggested.
If your chapter has more than one school
participating, you will need to line up a
minimum of two non-DAR judges to select one
senior from the scholarship essays to submit
to your District Vice-Chairman.
District Vice-Chairmen are:
For your chapter judging,
provide your judges with copies of the
students’ essays. Once your judges have
selected a chapter winner, keep a copy of this
student’s essay and send the original
paperwork to your District Vice-Chairman.
Please plan to have your judging completed and
all materials of your winner to your District
Vice-Chairman by November 15th. Your
Vice-Chairman will then facilitate the judging
for the District level and get the pertinent
materials of the winning District entrant to
this State Chairman by December 1st.
At the Fall Forum,
there will be a DAR Good Citizens table, where
you can order the pins, certificates and
wallet cards to give to each of your winners.
Remember, these are to be awarded to each
school winner, regardless of whether or not
that student chooses to enter the scholarship
essay contest. Chapters can only purchase
these items through this State Chairman.
This chairman has
attempted to highlight some of the important
points to remember as you work toward the
goals of this committee, but there is much
more information on the national website.
Please download all the forms as soon as
possible and get started!
Again, if you have questions, your District
Vice-Chairman and this State Chairman will be
happy to answer them for you!
Please embrace the
challenge of Iowa honoring a DAR Good Citizen
from every Iowa high school this year!
Dianna
Baker-Hoye
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