DAR Good Citizens
Mary Thunhorst, 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
their 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 10th 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 December 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 January
1st.
The certificate, wallet
card, and pin should be given to each school
winner regardless of whether or not the
student chooses to enter the scholarship essay
contest. In a policy change, the Wright
administration wants chapters to order their
certificates, cards, and pins directly from
the DAR Store. You may only buy them directly
from National. The certificates do have to
come from the DAR Store because they’ll need
to have President General Wright’s signature.
I will have NO certificates from here forward.
Please call me or email
if you have any questions. Thank you for
serving as DAR Good Citizen Chair for your
chapter.
Mary
Thunhorst
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