Free Debate Enabling Day

Free Debate's inaugural Enabling day (held on March 3rd) was all about providing our members with the know-how to put together and deliver Free Debate programs.

Kim kicked off proceedings with 'How to Present';
Tim followed up with 'How to Debate';
Bek facilitated a discussion on 'How to Organise' (put together by Bek and Kylie); and
Rob rounded off the day with the innovative and informative 'How to PowerPoint'.

For those on the receiving end, there was a lot to absorb. But our participants proved themselves highly capable when we set them the task of putting together a hypothetical Free Debate program plan. The results were thoughtful, comprehensive plans that would each be a fantastic starting point for a program.

A big thankyou to those who put so much effort into preparing the presentations, and to all participants for your engagement and feedback. We hope to run a similar training day again soon - we'll keep you posted!

Building Bridges

Free Debate conducted a presentation class for the Centre for Multi-Cultural Youth Issues (CMYI), as part of the as part of the Building Bridges project. CMYI is a community-based organisation that advocates for the needs of young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.

Building Bridges is an initiative of Vic Health seeking to promote intercultural understanding as a mechanism to reduce discrimination. For this project, CMYI has bought together young women from diverse backgrounds to organise a women's event, called Ee-Ha-Yeah, involving a variety of cultural exhibits and activities.

The Free Debate team of Lucia, Mat, Rebekah and Roland designed a training course aimed at improving the confidence and presentation skills of the participants, in the context of organising a major event. Our course emphasised practical exercises and was adapted to take account of the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds of the participants.

The feedback from the group was quite positive and Free Debate is keen to collaborate with CMYI in future initiatives.

Our thanks go to Rachel Murray of CMYI for organising Free Debate's participation in the programme, and to the participants for their time, efforts and the multicultural feast provided to the trainers.

2006 Pre-Australs ESL Results

We're pleased to announce that Keio University (Masako, Keiko and Rie) were the winners of the 2006 Pre-Australs ESL Invitational. The winning team was assisted by Tim Sonnreich.

Equal best speakers were Melanie (University of Indonesia) and Masako (Keio University).

Bayside Secondary School Pilot

With support from Western Chances, Free Debate has started a pilot debating programme at Bayside Secondary School. Western Chances is a not-for-profit organisation who provide assistance to students from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Western suburbs of Melbourne and we look forward to working more closely with Western Chances in the future.

The first phase of the programme was completed in July and involved a month-long series of workshops with a group of teachers who will hopefullybecome the core of the school’s debating programme. The seminars included exhibition debates and the creation of lots of training materials (which will be available from this site soon).

The second phase will begin soon and will involves a series of coaching sessions with students from both the junior and senior school.

Please contact us if you have an interest in helping out.

AMES Footscray Revisited

Free Debate conducted a second series of debating seminars for the Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES) evening classes in Footscray. Nicole Lynch, Cassie McGannon and Rob Koh led the 90 minute sessions covering speaking skills and argument formulation.

The AMES students debated a range of topics including drugs, gambling and the role of government.

Free Debate also conducted a one-off class for the AMES Footscray day class. Lucia Pietropaoli and Liz Sheargold were warmly received by the AMES advanced class, and gave a 2-hour seminar on public speakingtechniques, argument and rebuttal.

2006 Pre-Australs ESL Invitational

Free Debate is helping to organise a warm-up tournament for ESL teams on Saturday and Sunday 1-2 July 2006, just ahead of the Australiasian Intervarsity Debating Championships ("Australs"). Australs is being hosted by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and Free Debate member Kylie Lane will be the tournament's Chief Adjudicator.

The Pre-Australs ESL Invitational is a dedicated ESL competition especially for inexperienced speakers. Free Debate is organising a large pool of experienced adjudicators to help coach teams. You can get more information on the competition by e-mailing preaustrals2006@gmail.com or visiting this link.

Welcome New Members

Free Debate held a function to welcome over 15 new members. Our new members will help us provide more and a greater range of Services.