On October 18th 2020, the Executive Director of Rwanda We want organization announced that the public speaking competition whose theme is: “My Community, My Concern, My solution” is back making it the 4th edition whose area of focus will be problems caused or exacerbated by COVID-19.
Dubbed the virtual edition, this year’s competition, supported by Only Love Foundation, won’t be conducted as usual-where only secondary students competed in front of a large crowd- as we’re not in regular times and Rwanda We Want Organization is strict about following the measures put in place by the officials to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Rather, for a period of three weeks starting on Monday, October 19th, the competition will be open to all the youth residing in Rwanda within the age range between 16 and 25 years old and will be conducted via Rwanda We Want organization’s social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
How it will be conducted
The participants will be given one week to identify a problem caused or exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic and find a suitable solution.
They will therefore write an essay not longer than 1 page detailing their findings which will be submitted on this link (Click here) not later than Friday, 23rd October 2020.
From that pool, only 5 participants will be selected by a panel of judges to proceed to the final round where Rwanda We Want Organization’s communication team will find them to record 2 min max videos of them presenting their projects in the format of public speaking.
These videos will be posted on Rwanda We Want organization’s social media platforms and the winners will be selected based on the score awarded to each video by a panel of judges as well as the popularity on social media platforms (Likes, retweets and comments where they respectively apply).
The working language of the competition is Kinyarwanda, French and English.
The winner of the competition will be awarded with a Microsoft Surface Pro Tablet.
Background
As part of Rangurura program-aiming at training the youth with civic knowledge and skills that will allow them to make their own educated decisions, the public speaking competition began in 2016 with the theme “My Community, My concern, My solution” which aims at enhancing the youth’s critical thinking as well as public speaking skills.
The theme was chosen to reflect the need for the youth to be the positive change using their critical thinking to spot problems within their communities and come up with solutions.
Since the competition began in 2016, the winners of different editions were Caleb Ishimwe who won the 1st edition which was conducted in Glory Secondary School, the 2nd edition was won by Pierre Hategekimana from Gasiza Groupe Scolaire back in 2017, and Fabiola Dorcas Niwemwali was the winner of the 3rd edition in GS Kacyiru II in 2018.