Speaking out

On Thursday evening I headed straight from Parliament to Edmonton County School to take part in the judging of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Enfield final.

Let me take a minute to scrape my jaw off the floor! These kids, or should I say young people, were good, and I mean GOOD.

Speak Out, as the title suggests is a public speaking competition. The final I helped judge included those who had been whittled down from a group of 800 pupils from 17 state schools in Enfield.

I - and a number of other judges, including the Mayor, Christiana During - was tasked with ranking the finalists into the final finalists after hearing them speak on interesting and challenging topics.

I was impressed.

If, at that age, you'd have asked me to speak for two minutes to a huge number of my peers and others in an interesting and engaging manner on any topic, I would have hid under my seat. I've made up for it since, but it takes a great deal of balls to do what they did and I applaud them, even though it made our job as judges harder.

There is a grand final later in the year, but whether or not an individual from Enfield wins is immaterial. All of these young people, not just the three finalists we helped select, but each and every single one of the people who took part should feel proud of themselves. They have a confidence that many could only dream of and I am certain they will go far.