General Information

  • Volunteer Opportunities / Responsibilities: In over 50 Mikva DC classrooms across the city, students are getting up on their "soapbox" and delivering powerful and moving speeches on issues of importance to them and their community. And we need adult allies to be there to listen to them, encourage their civic leadership, and provide feedback on their public speaking.

    Mikva’s Project Soapbox speech competition is a program that helps teens develop communication skills – such as persuasive writing, issue research, and compelling delivery – that are critical to a young person’s ability to ‘get on a soapbox’ and become an advocate for pressing community issues. In their classrooms and after school clubs, close to 1,200 local students are preparing short speeches about the most important issues facing them and their community, and proposing unique solutions to those community issues.

    As an example, you can see one of last year's winning speeches here: https://vimeo.com/248016760

    Please join us this fall as a Project Soapbox guest judge in one of our participating classrooms. You can reach out to our program director, Justine Hipsky, for more information.





  • Types of Volunteers Needed: individual/adult
  • Hours Needed: business hours during the week