Feb 08 2011 / A Medal for My Speech!
by Nadya Azzahra, Indonesia 2010-2011 hosted in Florida
Hi all! I am so happy that my experiences as an exchange student led me to win a Bronze Medal for Public Speaking II Competition in FBLA District Conference. FBLA stands for Future Business Leaders of America and is one a club that I joined at school. My host sister helped me to come up with the idea of my experiences as an exchange student that could be developed to fit some of FBLA goals. Because we have to make a speech that develops from one or more FBLA goals. I was so happy as well as my host family. They said they were very proud of me.
Here is my Speech:
“It is only been a half year since I first came to America. Well, I realized it’s just such a short period of time to learn about this country. Now, Let me tell you about my story and how I finally got to be here. I remembered the day, when I read a poster in my high school which grabbed my attention by one of it’s sentences: “Listen to the world and the world will listen to you”. Hmm sounds really interesting. So, I kept reading the information in the poster until I got that it told me about how to be an exchange student.
At first I didn’t get why the title of the poster was “To be A Future Leader”. I wondered, how does becoming an exchange student make you become a future leader? Or how does it fit into some of FBLA goals such as Develop competent, business leadership, strengthen the confidence of students in themselves and their work, Encourage members in the development of individual projects that contribute to the improvement of home, business and community, develop character, prepare for useful citizenship and foster patriotism and also Encourage scholarship and promote school loyalty.
Let me continue my story. To get selected into my exchange program was really hard, I had to pass through lots of selections and many obstacles in order to complete all of the requirements. From a thousand people from my country, Indonesia, I finally got selected as one of the hundred that finally can go to America by Scholarship as an exchange student. My exchange program is called Youth Exchange and Study Program. The purposes of this program are to develop us to be a future leader and build understanding between America and countries with predominantly Muslim populations.
To be honest being an exchange student is not that easy. It is definitely very hard. It is not only about having fun but we have a really big responsibility to be an ambassador of our country by introducing our country to America and also learning the American culture from the inside. It’s like learning my country from the outside perspective and learning America from the inside perspective. Because our perception toward people would be totally different if we finally get a chance to live among them. It also boosts up my self pride to be Indonesian by looking at it from an outside view and at the same time respect the American people and their culture as well.
My accomplishment might not yet guarantee I can be a good future leader. However, to take a big step as an exchange student by going across the barrier of differences and creating a bridge of understanding between people are things that have to be done with lots of courage and make me one of the people that can make the change. One of my exchange friends from Turkey said “Sometimes a bunch of kids can accomplish more in a very small amount of time than a country can achieve in decades. We YES students started to remove the misconceptions and initiated a movement against prejudice. We have taken a step for world peace.” We don’t know our strengths and weaknesses if we always stay in our comfort zone. Looking at the world from a different point of view could make you understand why such differences exist among the community.
As part of my journey here I was observing how America can be such a great Nation with a great control over economic power. The key is definitely the people that are willing to create a good system to build up the nation over the past hundreds years since America got their Independence. America has lots of great leaders that encourage their people to make a change — Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and many others. They can achieve it because they have a courage and commitment to pursue it.
If you have a dream, you have to believe that you can pursue it, yet you have to maximize your work as well in order to achieve it. I always said to myself, If he can do it, she can do it and they can do it, why can’t I. Now, I’m standing here to take a single step to make a change and I would say, If I can do it then I believe you can do it too. A single step towards a contribution to your community could change the world. Let’s take a step forward together, as youth who are the ones that will create our future for the next generation, and make the world a better place for tomorrow.
Think about this very deeply and you might want to answer my previous question: how does becoming an exchange student make you become a future leader and how do my experiences fit into the goals of FBLA.
Thank you very much!
Check out Nadyas Blog here
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