Scholarship / Australian Awards Scholarship essay for masters degree. [2]

Hi everyone! I am currently looking for advices on the essay i made to AAS. This is for a masters degree coursework in Australian National University - Masters of Globalization. Please feel free to drop your input!

public speaking guide

How have you contributed to solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform? (be specific and include: what aspects of your leadership knowledge, skills, and practice you consider to be well established and effective; which people or organisations you worked with to solve the problem; and what creative methods were used)

I have always empowered the younger generations through public speaking. Public speaking, especially debate, is something that I have put my heart into for the last 6 years. Debate gave me the confidence that I never thought I could ever acquire, which eventually affected my academic performance. Since then, I have committed myself to build confidence of students who might feel the way I did back at school.

I started to contribute from my closest community, which is my own university. I was the president of International Relations Debating Club (IRDC) and had the opportunity to teach every week to International Relations students. Everyone is invited and encouraged to come to the class. The open class system was implemented for a year. But it is a challenge for me to just have students attend the class. A lot of students were afraid with the idea of delivering ideas in front of an audience. The Head of the major had also expressed the same concern to me and was afraid that the lack of interest from students could threaten the existence of the club. I knew right away that this problem would persist if my team and I stayed in the status quo.

The first thing I decided to do is to partner up with the university's marketing team and joined several International Relations events to promote IRDC. On those events, we provided booth, in which people could come and post us any questions related to their concern prior joining the club. I also took a rare opportunity to co-teach with two of my lecturers in their English for International Relations classes. In those weeks, I taught hundreds of students to build a strong case, to deliver an effective argument, and to own their audience. Only then did the students started to see how they could benefit from learning this subject.

A lot of students came up to me and said that they felt a change of attitude while learning their most disliked subject. Some also felt significantly confident when speaking to lecturers and in their academic performance. Hearing the response, I know I could actually get students to see that public speaking is doable and beneficial. I progressed by joining an act of community service and teaching high school students how to debate.