Local student wins regional Optimist essay contest

An essay written by Sydney Mafong, a student at Pacific Trails Middle School, has been selected as the California South Optimist District’s Essay Contest $2,500 scholarship winner. Her submittal was also forwarded to Optimist International as the district’s entry into the International Essay Contest competition. Earlier this year Sydney won the Del Mar-Solana Beach Optimist Club’s annual Essay Scholarship Contest based on a theme of “Reaching your Dreams by Choosing Optimism”.

Sydney Mafong

(Courtesy)

Sydney is the charter president of the Pacific Trails Middle School Junior Optimist International (JOI) Club which was chartered on Dec. 9, 2020 and is sponsored by the Del Mar - Solana Beach Optimist Club. Sydney was the prime mover in organizing and starting up the JOI Club. Even before the club was officially chartered, Sydney organized and led outdoor community service projects including park trail cleanups and park grounds cleanups in the Elizabeth Rabbitt Neighborhood Park and the Del Mar Mesa Preserve Trail. The newly organized and chartered Pacific Trails Middle School JOI Club has performed several additional projects after the first of the year, including making nutritious sack lunches for the homeless.

Optimist International is one of the world’s largest service club organizations with over 55,000 adult and youth members in more than 2,000 clubs in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico, and throughout the world. To learn more about Optimist International, call (314) 371-6000 or visit optimist.org.