Rhetorical ability just seems to run through the Rasch family.

Junior Jonny Rasch placed first in the Junior Achievement essay competition for the state of Maryland, receiving a $10,000 scholarship.

Rasch’s brother Jacob (‘12) won the larger grand prize three years ago for the best essay in all of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, inspiring Jonny to enter the contest, he said. The two runner-ups in Maryland were both from MCPS—one from Richard Montgomery and one from Blair.

“It’s pretty cool to be the best essay in the state,” Johnny Rasch said. “Coming into this competition I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew it was possible to win, but I wasn’t sure that I would.”

All contestants wrote a response to the following question: “Which will do more to improve life in the United States over the next decade, business entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs? Why?”

Rasch wrote about microfinances in Uganda, a topic he learned about when he visited the country last summer on a service trip. While he was there, he worked with local businesses and helped them with whatever they needed, including helping them sell and package products.

Rasch thinks that both business and social entrepreneurs benefit society in their own unique ways and are equally important in order to have a complete society, he said.

“Microfinances are organizations where people will receive loans to start their own businesses,” Rasch said. “The specific one that I worked with was the Women’s Microfinance Institute, which gives loans to women so that they can be they can be the one in charge of their finances.”

Although the essay was 1463 words long, Rasch didn’t find writing the essay to be too burdensome.

“I really didn’t spend that much time on this essay,” he said. “I originally wrote a first draft, then, with some help from my dad, we managed to work together to get a final product.”

Though discussing Ugandan microfinances may seem narrow in scope, such policies could have broader policy implications, especially for women, Rasch argued in his essay.

“A major problem in Uganda is domestic abuse, so by giving loans to women, it helps to reduce domestic violence,” he said.