In our fourth month of online engagement, Global UGRAD finalists saw the return of some of our popular series activities: our student-facilitated Country Presentations and our Speaker Series. This round of Country Presentations closed out with student presenters from three additional regions, and this edition of the Speaker Series, focused on public speaking, featured guest speaker Zoe Matthews.
Country Presentations
Global UGRADs from Jordan, Niger, Ethiopia, Morocco, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Haiti, and El Salvador presented to an audience of their Global UGRAD peers and had the opportunity to expand each others’ knowledge on their home countries and cultures.
“I found it very interesting and informative, being able to feel the greatness that resides in this world and in our diversity through each presentation was the best feeling. I also did a presentation on my country, Jordan, with my partner Rinad. It made us both very proud and happy to introduce everyone to our home. Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity!” – Hala Al-Amayreh
Speaker Series: Public Speaking
Continuing with the Speaker Series, Zoe Matthews joined the Global UGRAD team in our Public Speaking session. Ms. Matthews is a freelance education consultant, who has recently completed consultancies for Save the Children, The Asia Foundation and UNESCOMs, and formerly served as Program Director for World Learning at the American Center English Language Program in Yangon. In this session, Ms. Matthews helped students build an awareness of the strategies that can be used to prepare themselves to become confident and compelling speakers. Attendees also had opportunities to reflect on examples from the real world of effective public speaking and time to practice the strategies they learned in the session.
“I am personally super happy about the public speaking session. The guest speaker was so kind and brought into the meeting a fun as well as enjoyable sharing activity. The breakout room where we could share and discuss our thoughts as fellow speakers was also a nice idea.” – Amaluddin, Indonesia