Rural Debate Initiative

The Rural Debate Initiative (“RuDI”) is a nationally focused non-profit that seeks to expand access to competitive debate across secondary school students in rural areas. We provide debate programs and supplemental programs to our students in a virtual format and for free. We believe that a virtual debate ecosystem is now a real possibility in a post-COVID world with the increase in investment in learning devices and broadband development. We emphasize regionality and connectivity; respecting and facilitating connections between rural individuals and their local community and supporting the growth of a nationwide network of rural educators and students. Our current debate programs include weekly coaching sessions, internal debate tournaments with debaters from other regions and high schools covered by RuDI and intensive summer debate camps. We also assist with registering and paying for external tournaments that happen virtually. Through debating, students develop supportive interpersonal relationships, which have been proven by science to be extremely important for education attainment, to decrease absenteeism and mental health problems, and to greatly restore student connectedness to schools in a post-COVID climate. Debaters on average also display greater college readiness, higher standardized test scores, and better graduation rates than non-debaters. We recognize that there is more to debate than the act of debating, which is why we provide supplemental programs designed to help the rural students develop as a well-rounded individual through areas outside of debate but still related to debate. These initiatives focus on supporting the real-life impact that debate might have on the life and career of the rural students by giving them a more diverse and impact-oriented education than one that they might receive in the classroom. Some programs include career development mentorship, college application workshops, leadership development initiatives, and more.