Optimist International Oratorical Contest
Who can apply Students under 19 who have not yet finished secondary school
How you apply You enter a contest. Placing in it is the application.
Amount and deadline
Checked against the provider's page in Oct 2026.
Worth knowing
No date is shown here because there is no single one to show. Club contests are usually held by late March but each sponsoring club sets its own, the Alberta Zone contest runs in April, and the District contest sits inside the third quarter District meeting in May. The date you need is your local club's, so contact one in the fall. Alberta clubs sit in Zones 3, 5 and 6 of the AMSNW District. There is no minimum age, and it is open to secondary students including younger grades and Quebec CEGEP.
About this scholarship
Optimist International runs an annual speech contest on a set topic, judged live, not on paper. You have to be under 19 as of October 1 of the contest year and not yet finished secondary school. You start at a local Optimist Club and win your way up through the Zone to the District, where the placings are worth $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000. This is a sibling of the Communication Contest for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, which runs the same topic on a separate track.