Introduction of SAYF 2020
South Asian Youth Festival 2020 is organized to gather youths from South Asian Countries, connect with them, share and learn their perspective, and develop a strong bond. The 3- weeks-long program is organized on the occasion of International Youth Day 2020 to celebrate youth power, energy, creativity, success, and capabilities. This festival which is being organized virtually will continue till the 3rd of September. The festival is organized in collaboration with various South Asian organizations like UNICEF- ROSA; UNESCO; A2I, Cabinet Division, Bangladesh, UNDP; National Youth Council Nepal; CYDA, India; CYN, Sri Lanka; Pinnacle Consultancy Pvt. Ltd, Maldives; Dynamic Youth Afghanistan; Maldives National Youth Council; Coca-Cola; Turkish Airlines & South-South Network.
A brief, yet fun, powerful, and skillful workshop helped the participants to improve their public speaking abilities, highlighted the public speaking experiences of youths, their challenges, and provided an opportunity to learn tricks and tips. The Public Speaking Workshop was held on Wednesday, 19th of August at the South Asian Youth Festival 2020.
Public Speaking Workshop
A workshop was designed for youth who wants to amplify their speaking skills. Its core content included ideas, both basic and advanced, on how to be more persuasive and how to do better on content, style, and strategy-wise.
Mr. Ghimire warmed the session by highlighting the objectives of communication and the concept of the fundamentals of speaking. He started the workshop session by showing the slide presentation and raising the questions to the participants. Likewise, he asked participants to share their thoughts and experiences through the chat-box section which enhances them to learn from each other.
He defined the term communication and explained the possible objectives to communicate. Communication helps to spread knowledge and information among people and there are thousands of reasons to communicate. It helps people to express their ideas and feelings, and at the same time, helps us to understand the emotion and thoughts of others. Mr. Ghimire agreed with the participants as they mentioned in the chat-box section. He highlighted the different possible communication objectives, and have said each of them has a particular value. Most people want to understand others, and they want to gain acceptance of their ideas. The key points of possible communication include; creating awareness, imparting knowledge, projecting an image, shaping attitudes and behavior, stimulating desire, and effecting a sale. There are plenty of reasons to communicate.
He shared some information on the fundamental questions, as we all are familiar with 5 Ws and one H, or the Six Ws are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering. They include Who, What, When Where, Why, and How. Those are Six Ws questions that we can ask on an everyday basis on most of our actions. This term is used to deliver news and information for authenticity.
Mr. Ghimire said that we all have a good speaker within ourselves. We need to explore and make that quality of the speaker improve through a creative approach. There are different components in good speaking. They are contents, style, presentation, word selection, time management, and other techniques.
The next topic he explained in the Communication Cycle Model. It is a function to communicate with each other and expresses how the system of conveying and understanding messages operates. To understand the communication cycle model, Mr. Ghimire described all the key components. Those key components include encoding, decoding, a medium of transmission, Recipient, Sender, and feedback. The communication cycle is essential, and it is impossible to skip any of them. The sender sends the message. The sender uses gestures, facial expressions, posture, multiple media to express and sends to the recipient. The messages are carried through a medium called a channel. A message has to be transmitted in such a way that it can be understood by both the sender and the recipient. Thus, Both the sender and recipient can communicate effectively, understand each other better, and react to each other more insistently.
Similarly, he explained the encoding of a message is putting into words or the creation of the message. The decoding of a message means decrypting the data that has been given. While communicating there rises a kind of interference, when conventions aren’t clear for everyone, this can lead to noise, which can then eventually lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Also, the participants shared their experiences of miscommunication as well. While talking about feedback; the recipient automatically becomes the sender.
Speaking is a very narrow concept within the board foundation of communication. It is just one form of communication. Once we understand communication, speaking becomes easier. He said if we take speaking as a form of communication that eventually help us to understand and recognize the board horizon of communication. So, communication takes a lot of different shapes. A message is communicated in different ways; colors and symbols; non-verbal communication (gestures, handshaking, expression); slide visual; spoken and written form of communication. Thus, communication is on board in terms of speaking.
With the evolution of technology, there are different ways of communication to connect like in terms of code, using mems, etc. Communication can also be simultaneously in one more than the forum. He gave a pretty brilliant example of non-verbal gestures and added the point that with the help of technology we can use it. The technology more we use, the more it is easy to understand.
Similarly, there was discussion about effective communication, Modes and Perception, and Reflection as well. Likewise, these three terms were explained in a detailed manner. They were Matter Content, Matter Style, and Matter Strategy. Mr. Ghimire said that a matter is something that can be written and content that follows must be clear, logical, and interesting. The content needs to relate to the present condition and also mentioned that a speaker needs to be able to relate the message he/she wishes to deliver.
Mr. Ghimire introduced the topic,” Modes of Persuasion.” Persuasion is a sort of demonstration since people are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated. Aristotle’s modes of persuasion are believed to be the heart of almost every speech. They build credibility, stir emotions, and prompt action. There are three modes of persuasion. They are Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Ancient rhetorical theory identified three main modes of persuasion: a speaker could prove his points or render his arguments plausible through logos (that is, reasoning, analysis, and argument), ethos (that is, the characters of the individuals involved in the trial, especially that of the defendant and the speaker), or pathos (that is, strong emotions aroused by the speaker in his audience).
The next discussion was headed on the topic of “The Fear Component”. This exercise is just to acknowledge the fear is a good thing; without fear, we would be probably have gone out of discipline. Fear is an emotion just like happiness, feeling confident, angry, surprised, etc. In his view, he explained two acceptance i.e. “fear is natural” and “fear is not necessarily a bad thing.” Meanwhile, accepting these two components helps a lot to overcome fear. In the second layer of discussion, he shared his opinion regarding how to overcome the fear. And, some of the participants shared their perceptions, experiences, and advice in terms of overcome the fear in the chat-box section. He said,” Try to get into your content and also into the context, then that will have a better scene of what sort of tone to adapt.”
Mr. Ghimire spoke about the most important part of Amplifying Speaking was Vocal variation and vocal modulation. There was a formula which was explained to all the participants’ i.e. “VoRaToPi” where Vo means “Volume”, Ra means “Rate” of speech, To means “Tone” of speech and Pi means “Pitch” of the speech. Along with this, he explained different contexts like developing competence to show presentation confidence, ways to Structure your topic’s message to speak with conviction, how to send clear messages to your audiences to demonstrate expertise, Sending signals with our body language and voice, and also ways to engage their listeners to hold their attention and influence like an expert.
Before the session ended, Mr. Ghimire added a few remarks regarding SAYF 2020; “A big thank you to the Glocal team and all the organizers of the festival for this incredible opportunity that you created not just for the wonderful young people from all of South Asia come together to exchange ideas, and views. Along with this, I am thankful for encouraging remarks on the chat.”
Conclusion
The skillful workshop ended in an intellectual, insightful, and interactive way. As a result, it was indeed an excellent conversation with South Asian young participants. The workshop helped the participants to learn the basics of fundamental speaking for a beginner and the seasoned speaker, and also, they learned some of the tips and ideas to make their public speaking better.