About

The Richmond Forum Speech & Debate Initiative is a community initiative of The Richmond Forum and its subscribers and partners. Founded in 1987, The Richmond Forum is America’s largest non-profit speaker series, attracting the biggest names in the world to its stage in Richmond, Virginia.

From former U.S. Presidents to foreign heads of state to leaders from the arts, sciences, and business, speakers come to The Forum to address the Richmond community and foster civil discourse about the important issues of the day.

Of course, Richmond itself has a history of great speeches that precedes The Richmond Forum, beginning with Patrick Henry’s game-changing 1775 speech in which he famously proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death!”

A lesser-known line from that speech holds a place on a wall in The Forum’s offices, and aligns with its mission:

“In proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is the only way we can hope to arrive at truth.”

–Patrick Henry, Richmond, Virginia, 1775 at Historic St. John’s Church

Richmonders have long understood that the ability to speak with power and confidence and civilly articulate and debate ideas and points of view is critical to a functioning democracy and a successful life.

In that local tradition, The Richmond Forum and its partners believe our region’s students should have access to strong speech and debate programs in our public schools. These programs teach research, critical thinking, construction of logical arguments, assessment of audience, self-esteem, poise and presentation, and engagement in world events—skills which build better students, better college candidates, better employees, and better citizens.

In 2018, The Richmond Forum launched the Richmond Forum Speech & Debate Initiative by awarding grants to Chesterfield County Public Schools and Richmond Public Schools to help elevate existing high school speech and debate teams and start new ones.

The impact of these pilot year grants exceeded our expectations:

• Three schools in Chesterfield were able to start teams
• Schools with existing teams were able to participate in more and higher-level competitions
• 60% more Chesterfield students participated in speech and debate programs than during the previous school year
• For the first time in recent history, a George Wythe High School (City of Richmond) student made it to the State Championship, competing in the “Extemporaneous” speaking category.

“The Richmond Forum has the potential to spark a national trend in which independent nonprofits work closely with local school districts, statewide organizations, and the NSDA to strengthen speech and debate in their communities.”

–Scott Wunn, Executive Director, National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA)

During the 2019-2020 school year, the Initiative continued its rapid growth by awarding grants to 21 teams and supporting over 350 public school students. We couldn’t have done this without the generosity of our partners and subscribers. We continue to make progress towards our goal of having high-performing speech and debate activities in every public middle and high school in the Richmond region by 2025, the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s historic speech.