Teens’ mission to bring speech opportunities to their community

There is currently a lack of education within the American school system and focus on the humanities, specifically communication and presentation skills. Especially in Diamond Bar and its school district, many students choose to go down a STEM path simply because few public speaking programs are available to pursue.

After accidentally stumbling into an existing debate program outside of school, students Kayla Nguyen and Nathan Chu set out to bring public speaking skills to their community.
Nathan Chu, 16, a rising Junior at Diamond Bar High School, and Kayla Nguyen, 16, a rising Junior at Troy High School, founded Students Speakers of America back in July of 2020. The student organization primarily serves to fill the need of their local community and provide free, accessible opportunities where students can learn to communicate and exhibit their public speaking skills effectively.

Chu explained, “Kayla and I both participated in competitive speech and debate and noticed a common theme: a lack of interest in public speaking because schools didn’t have programs. Both of us were privileged enough to discover speech and debate through outside organizations, and we realized that many students did not have the same opportunities we did. This inspired us to bring our knowledge to others.”

Student Speakers of America, SSOA for short, has held five digital workshops, focusing on different speech, debate, or humanity-based extracurriculars students can get involved in. In addition, on their social media, SSOA makes educational posts focusing on events beginners can try. They have also recently launched a mentee program when students who want personal instruction are free to decide their own instruction material, schedules, and what they talk about, whether a lecture, speaking drill, or more. To date, they have involved over 200 students from the Orange and LA County area, even starting a chapter at Troy High School.

“The impact we’ve made thus far has completely exceeded our expectations. Our goal was never to bring attention or fame to our organization, hence why we decided not to file it as a non-profit or NGO. Instead, we simply wanted to bring more attention to the lack of public-speaking education in our community and provide a way for those preexisting underrepresented programs to be more easily found,” Nguyen said.

For More information, you can visit Student Speaker of America at
https://www.instagram.com/studentspeakersofamerica/
https://contactssoa.wixsite.co...
https://m.facebook.com/studentspeakersofamerica/?tsid=0.9786020972601529&source=result