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By Bill McAulay
Posted: 21 June 2015

A year ago, President Chris Garrett asked David Knight and the Youth Committee to organise a speech contest for Porirua City secondary schools along the lines of the highly successful Parumoana Cluster Primary Schools contest that has been running for more than a decade.

TrophyIt was timely to be able to run this contest during the Porirua City 50 Years Celebration year as the city is focusing on supporting the youth of the city.

JessicaThere are six schools in Porirua: Aotea College, Bishop Viard College, Mana College, Marsden Whitby, Porirua College and Te Kura o Porirua. We decided to ask these schools to each select two senior students to represent the school in a formal Prepared Speech Contest. We were particulaly delighted that Aotea College was represented by Jessica Nüssel, the Cluh's International Exchange Student, who spoke about The Butterfly Effect.

We left the choice of topic over to each student and ran the contest along similar lines to a Toastmasters International Prepared Speech Contest.

After a lot of cajoling of the six secondary schools in the city we were able to hold our inaugural event on Friday 19 June with nine contenders and great support from all six schools.

The students needed to speak for a minimum of four and a half minutes and a maximum of seven and a half minutes. There were seven judges, tally counters, red lights, orange lights, green lights, even a tie breaking judge. The event was very smoothly chaired by President Chris.

Judging was based on 60 points being available for speech content, development and effectiveness, with 40 points being available for the delivery of the speech.

Harcourts generously provided sponsorship which meant that we had all costs covered.

We were privileged to hear nine exceptionally talented speakers who covered a wide range of topics - some deeply personal, some very well researched, all of them impressive. The three highest scoring speakers demonstrated tremendous oratory skills and did not use notes.

Congratulations to the three place-getters.

  • Terina-Teowai Andrews from Te Kura o PoriruaTerina
  • Mimesi Omeri from Bishop Viard CollegeMimisa
  • Levi Skelton from Te Kura o PoriruaLevi

Mayor Nick Leggett presented the winning trophies and award certificates.

NickThanks to the Youth Committee who all helped out with running the event and supplying supper. Thanks also to the judges from our club and Whitby Toastmasters.

We are keen to run the event again next year.

Speakers impress and entertain

 
 
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