This question was posed to primary school students from Barrington Public School, Gloucester Public School, Stratford Public School and St Joseph’s Primary School, Gloucester in an essay competition.

The competition was conducted by Gloucester Rotary Club.and asked students in Year 5 and 6 from each of the four schools to imagine if they were mayor for a day, what would they like to see for the area.

The criteria for the students was to use their imagination and write about things they find important.

The judging was not on sentence construction or spelling but on the ideas the students put forward.

The five judges from the Rotary club had a difficult job of selecting from 96 entries. It took one and a half hours of reading and sorting to come up with a unanimous winner.

St Joseph’s Primary School, Gloucester Year 5 student Poppy Yates put forward some great achievable ideas to help our community and was therefore named the winner. 

On Tuesday, October 2, Poppy and four Rotarians met with MidCoast Council Mayor David West at Gloucester Council Chambers.

Poppy was presented with her Rotary award and joined Mayor West for a tour of the council chambers and morning tea.  

Mayor West was impressed with what Poppy put forward and expressed an interest in investigating at least one of her ideas.

The entries inspired the Rotary board so much that $250 was awarded to each school to enable them to pursue excellence in literacy. 

The Gloucester Rotary Club meets every Tuesday at 6.30pm at the Gloucester Bowling Club.