National Public Speaking Competition 2020

The ESU Ukraine is a part of a unique global education charity and membership organisation that brings together and empowers young people with confidence in communication. We seek to build skills and give individuals the opportunity to realise their full potential. The Nationa Public Speaking Competition, now in its 12th year, is one of the ESU most successful programmes. It represents one of the clearest manifestations of the ESU goals: to enable young people to become confident communicators, critical thinkers and empowered citizens. It provides young people with an opportunity to develop their vital skills that enable them to speak with confidence in public.

This year the Semi-Final and the Final of the NPSC 2020 was held on Saturday, 29 February, 2020 at America House, Kyiv. I would like to take the opportunity to thank America House for hosting and providing such a wonderful venue for the competition. I’d like to thank all AH team and its director Tetyana Strelchenko for her kind assistance. My special thanks to IT, Tech and Innovation Manager Oleksander Sleiienkov for his help and support in the preparatory stage and during the day!

The theme for this year Semi-Final was “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”. 18 semi-finalists were chosen to the semi-final of the competition from different regions of Ukraine: Lviv, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Poltava, Cherkassy, Kirovohrad, Zakarpattia, Khmelnytskiy, Odessa, Kyiv and others. Yesterday they interpreted this theme presenting their amazing, inspirational speeches and wonderful performance. These gifted young people competed to represent Ukraine at the International Public Speaking Competition in London in May 2020. They all had made great efforts to proceed to the Semi-Final and we are proud of their achievements.

The speeches were assessed by honourable adjudicators, who were: 1) James Whittingham,  Program and Development Associate at IREX in Ukraine; 2) Pei Tsai, US Embassy Political Officer; 3) Dr Larysa Yarova, ESU Ukraine steering committee member, Head of Translation, Applied and General Linguistics Department of CUSPU; 4) Yuliia Vereschak, ESU Ukraine member, one of the top 5 finalists of the International Teacher Award 2019; 5) Vladyslav Danyleiko, ESU Ukraine steering committee member, Lawyer, DLA Piper Ukraine, 2014 NPSC winner and IPSC participant.

After the judges’ decision seven best speakers proceeded to the Final where they delivered impromptu speeches. And after all the impromptu presentations the winner of the NPSC 2020 was announced who is Nikol Korolchuk, who is originally from Uzhhorod and now is a student of Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman. She appeared to be the best speaker according to the audience choice. The runner up was Veronika Zimon, a student from National University of Ukraine “Dnipro Politech”.

My sincerest and warmest congratulations to the winner and the runner up of the competition and also to all the contestants! I’d like to thank every participant for making the competition such a successful event. I hope you all enjoyed this fantastic day full of sharing, commitment and inspiration!

Dr Nadiya Ivanenko,
Chairman of the ESU Ukraine