UNESCO PARIS

The Ministry of Education of France organizes every year a Bilingual Oratory and Debate competition for French schools all over the world. This contest is called "Ambassadeurs en Herbe" and uses French, together with the language of the country of origin of each competitor. The selections are performed by geographic region, first, and by continent, later. To give you an idea: the selection process for Ambassadeurs en Herbe is as follows: the students are separated in groups of 5 members, each one with a specific role. The elimination process begins with a large number of participants, organized in groups, who make and present speeches. The best speeches are selected while the rest of the competitors are eliminated; this goes on and on until only one group is left. This resulting group consists of 5 members, each one with one of the 5 original roles, and they will represent the region or the continent at the global level meeting. When the winners of each continent travel to France to attend the world meeting of the year, their speeches are carefully chosen and delivered at the UNESCO Headquarters. In addition to this, they make a visit to the French House of Representatives.

 

In 2016, I was living in New York and attended a bilingual (French/English) Lyceum. After an internal pre-selection at the Lyceum, I was chosen among other students to compete against participants from all North America (United States and Canada) in the city of Toronto, in the role of the High School Speaker. No need to tell you that it was hard to compete in French and English with native speakers of those languages when my mother tongue is Spanish!!!

 

After the elimination process, I was lucky enough to win the continental selection for High School Speaker representative for the whole of North America in France. Once in Paris, each of us had to deliver a speech on a subject by the UNESCO Headquarters in France. I got to talk about "Education and Freedom of Speech on Social Media".

Here is the link to listen to my speech: https://www.aefe.fr/playlist/13314 (min: 25- 32).

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9KY5U-8Ug