We aim to make debate accessible to all students, regardless of their financial situation.
FAQ
What is our mission?
PepTalk’s mission is to provide mentorship, support and guidance to small school national students who are interested in speech and debate but without access to the same resources as students of more well-established programs. Our vision is a world where students with smaller resources would be able to debate nationally without disadvantage.
Who will provide the mentorship?
PepTalk recruits national speech and debate students to act as mentors. These students all compete nationally in their respective events; many have qualified for national championships. These students frequently excel at both invitational and state-level tournaments. PepTalk’s innovation is to bring coaching resources to those less fortunate by disseminating the coaching techniques and approaches the mentors have been fortunate enough to have learned over the years to students directly.
How will it work?
First, PepTalk will recruit interested students through outreach programs. Through these programs, we will provide more details on the PepTalk program and provide the logistics of the meeting sessions. We will then partner-up with students and develop a schedule to meet and work together. We would like to meet or talk on a weekly basis throughout the school year and hope to have most of the in-person meetings at your school.
What do mentors do?
Once the year starts, the mentors will help the students in two different ways -- online consulting, and tournament guidance. The online consultants will be available to work with the students at mutually convenient, previously scheduled times. If the students ever need help with working on a debate case, for example, there will be an online consultant available to answer any students’ questions through a simple email, by phone, or even Skype, if available. Debaters competing at specific tournaments will help the students before and between rounds. These mentors will be available to give advice to the students about their rounds and more importantly, be a friendly face at tournaments.
How much will it cost?
Nothing, and there's no catch!
What events does PepTalk support?
Our program is geared towards High School Lincoln Douglas Debate, but we will be expanding to Public Forum soon!
About
Founded in 2014, PepTalk is a free student mentorship program that recruits nationally competitive high school debaters to mentor and support other students without the same resources of more well-established programs. Our (and our mentors’) vision for debate is one where all students’ passion for the activity determine their success, while the level of resources they have access to is not an obstacle. PepTalk maintains a 1:1 mentor to mentee ratio, ensuring each mentee receives personalized attention.
We want to stress the fact that mentors are not “coaches”—they are peers who are meant to support under-resourced debaters navigating the national circuit.
