
To be a trainee at Wake-Up Call is exactly what it sounds like: to train. To train working with many new and different things. But first and foremost to train to deliver a public presentation, speak in front of the audience and lead workshops. In the blog post below one of our wonderful trainees, Tova Melin, shares her experiences with you.
During the last couple of months we keep on working on our own presentations about the climate crisis, climate solutions and youth climate action. We also train to make a public presentation. For now the public is limited to our colleagues: the other trainees and Oleg, our “coach”.
Following the same method that we use in all our presentations we create our own stories and illustrate them with pictures, music and videos. I myself working on a version of “Youth Change the World!”, a multimedia story-telling experience full of emotional pictures, stark colours and inspiring examples of youths already engaged in the climate movement. This presentation shall get our listeners start reflecting over who we are as a generation, in a world full of changes and challenges. It shall also inspire us to think positive and start act ourselves, here and now.
I try to do it with a presentation that consists almost entirely of pure pictures. I’m not showing any text that an audience reads at the same time as they listen to me. I have to emphasise the words I speak, make them stronger. Pictures are good for that. For every picture I show there is a story to tell. They are stories about my friends, about young people whom I met through my own engagement with the climate change issue. I am glad to share stories of their successes and victories. There are so many young heroes who got the world moving in the right direction, one small step after another, and, put together, they become huge positive changes.
We create our presentations ourselves. Then we show the latest iteration for each other, get feedback, and keep on further improving them. We have met and trained in the art of public speaking and presenting two times already: in Stockholm in February and in Uppsala in March. I am proud that I managed to deliver my presentation both those times, and I’m proud that already the second time I got a much better structure of my presentation, felt more secure and confident as a public speaker. With a little practice it becomes easier to take place on stage, even if I still have a lot to learn about speaking in front of other people.
It’s huge – to create so many words out of almost nothing. And it’s huge to know that there will come a time in the near future when I can do everything that feels so difficult today.
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