Roosevelt Island Youth Program/Beacon Celebrates Lights On After School Programs With Spelling Bee Competition

Adib Mansour of the Roosevelt Island Youth Program (RIYP) reports:

The Roosevelt Island Youth Program / Beacon in conjunction with the NYC Department Of Youth & Community Development (DYCD) launched in October 2000 Lights On Afterschool, the only nationwide event celebrating after school programs and their important role in the lives of children, families and communities.

Last week RIYP Beacon at PS/IS 217 celebrated the Lights On After School Programs with a Spelling Bee competition… with a bang.

Image Of Jaden Nunez At RIYP Spelling Bee From Adib Mansour

Groups 1 through 5 practiced hard with their counselors for over 2 weeks prior and their diligence culminated in a Spelling Bee competition with the top 10 from each group competing in individual setting or a group setting.

The event was done at the PS/IS 217 school’s auditorium, with the stage set up like a professional competition. Each student from the specific group was asked to come up to the microphone

Image Of Isabel Shogen At RIYP Spelling Bee From Adib Mansour

and spell a specific word. We heard the usual “can you put it in a sentence” and the “can you pronounce it”, and we even got the “can you spell it” as a joke from Elyes Bouchik.

Image Of Elyes Bouchik at RIYP Spelling Bee From Adib Mansour

Group 3’s competition was very close with the top three clinching to their position. The excited audience all of a sudden became mute with anticipation. The word that everyone was stuck with its spelling was: COURAGEOUS. There were numerous attempts with all kinds of spellings.

The winner of that division was: Noemi Lozado with Elyes Bouchik as the runner up.

Group 1 consisted of several sub-groups competing against each others. The winning cluster consisted of the following participants: Sadie Fuchs, Hugo Yuan Xu, Dleanna Hoosain, Ean Britt, Adlai Jenkins, and Matthew Xu.

In Group 2, and large subgroup won by a narrow margin consisting of: Wyatt Saru-Riley, Elizabeth Miranda, Michael Xu, Jeffrey Li, Selena Ramirez, Idan Messer, Mark Reparaz, Edina Pasic, and Michael Wen.

Group 4’s 1st place went to Amrita Chaturvedi.

Group 5’s 1st place was won by Misha Mumeeb and the runner up was Bhaskar Chakrabarti.

All 1st place winners received a certificate of Accomplishment.

The RIYP Beacon will continue this successful competition and will post announcements for each of the events.