“Speak Up, Speak Out”: The power of public speaking

Our Mentor Jessica recently put on a fantastic “Speak Up, Speak Out” session for our Market Stall Managers, teaching them how to improve their public speaking skills as well as their confidence. You can read all about this inspiring event from Jessica herself below - enjoy!

“I recently had the pleasure of spending a Wednesday evening with a group of inspiring, talented and unique young adults. The current cohort of Breadwinners joined me for an evening of public speaking training. Not what most 17- 20 year olds want to be doing with their time! But little did they know how fun, engaging and useful the session would be in providing them with the tools to empower their voice.

Through a series of activities and games we spent time practicing different tools to speak up and speak out. This all ended with a speech writing activity and speech showcase.

This was no turn to not know what I was in store for.

Shanzay kicked off with an inspirational talk about life. We then had a series of talks, 3 out of 4 them began with "I want to talk to you about life" and each speech was beyond motivating, encouraging and powerful.

How had these young brilliant minds sat for less than 30 minutes to write a speech in the second or third language (English) and shared such powerful insights and words of wisdom?

The speeches encouraged us to look at ourselves with love, to never give up, to keep believing with sound bites like:

"This life is expensive, is it worth the cost"

And

"Keep climbing, don't give up, you will make it to the top if your mountain and be the greatest you ever thought you could."

Many of us, participants and myself sat there, soaking in the inspiration at our mini Breadwinners TED event.

We also had a fun speech about black coffee, it motivates, it tastes good and the process of bean to cup is pretty cool, according to the speakers first hand knowledge.

The session last week with Breadwinners is the reason I set up Pendo Speaks. To equip and empower people to learn the know to speak up and speak out, whilst building the confidence to do this confidently and authentically.”

Thank you Jessica for putting on such an empowering event for our young people and for sharing your thoughts with us! 🧡 Make sure you check out Pendo Speaks!