On Saturday 14th February three members of Napier Toastmasters judged this competition , which has been going for several years and is for Year 12 or 13 Secondary School students. It is run in conjunction with the RSA and is to commemorate one of New Zealand’s great war heros in Cyril Bassett VC,the only New Zealander to win a VC at Gallipoli. There are eight regional finals around the country and the winners attend the grand final in Wellington during March. Each regional winner receives $1000 for themselves and $1000 for their school and the overall National winner gets a trip to Gallipoli on Anzac Day with the New Zealand contingent. However this year as it is the 100 years since that fateful landing ALL the Regional winners are going to Gallipoli and the National winner will present their speech on Anzac Day at Anzac Cove.
As a Club we have judged the Eastern District Regional final for a number of years and the quality of the Contestants (from East Cape to the Wairarapa) and their speeches never ceases to amaze us. Their subject this year was “New Zealanders in World War 1” and they could choose a particular operation or to cover the war collectively, or they choose to profile a serviceman/woman from the past, or an aspect of the commemoration of war (Anzac Day,war memorials etc) or those that stayed at home and worked for the war effort. This gave them a fairly wide gambit to speak about and made for some extremely interesting and not such well known stories from that time.
Eight students contested the Regional final and all are to be congratulated on their efforts, approx 100 people attended the event at the Napier RSA and the judges (who utilise basically Toastmaster International Speech Contest criteria) have a difficult time deciding the winner on most occasions. However this year, while all contestants did very well, one really stood out and we believe she will be hard to beat come the National final in March. It is really so heartening, when we read and hear so much bad press about the youth of today, to see and hear these students representing their schools with enthusiasm and pride.
The winning speech was presented by Abigal May from Woodford House in Hastings, with such a wonderful story and marvellous presentation skills and utilising all the things we promote in Toastmaster to make a winning speech. Runner up was Sam Hiha from Napier Boys High and other schools represented were Wairarapa College,Iona College,Rathkeale College, Taradale High School and Havelock North High.
Best of luck to Abigal, and if you ever have the opportunity to judge one of these competitions grab it and saviour the quality of these young New Zealanders oratory skills. Could well be a number of future Toastmasters there!
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