Today we’d like to introduce you to Lingua Speech Academy.
Hello Lingua Speech Academy, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Our names are Ananya, Sriya, and Asmit, and we created Lingua Speech Academy, a public speaking and debate mentorship program for under-resourced kids in our community. All three of us are part of our high school’s debate team, where we witnessed the diminishing resources and funding allocated to the program by our district, despite its immense benefits. Recognizing the impact debate had on our own growth; we felt compelled to address this issue. Starting off as a small initiative, we began by holding free summer workshops in our neighborhood to build middle schoolers’ foundation of public speaking. To extend our impacts, we organized community service projects with students and participated in speech competitions. Through these projects, our students gained practical experience and developed empathy and leadership qualities. Additionally, we recognized the value of competitive platforms and started having our students participate in speech competitions. This allowed our students to test their skills, gain confidence, and showcase their talent. The combination of workshops, community service, and competitions has enabled LSA to provide a comprehensive learning experience for our students, empowering them to excel both academically and personally.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The journey of Lingua Speech Academy has not been without its challenges. While we have been committed to our mission from the start, we faced several obstacles along the way. One of the main struggles was limited resources, including funding and access to facilities. As a result, we had to be resourceful and creative in finding ways to provide our mentorship program to students. Additionally, reaching a wider audience and gaining recognition in the community required persistent outreach efforts and establishing partnerships with local organizations. Overcoming these challenges demanded perseverance, dedication, and the unwavering belief in the transformative power of our program. Despite the obstacles, the impact we have made on the lives of our students has been immensely rewarding, and it has motivated us to keep pushing forward.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We are Lingua Speech Academy, a public speaking mentorship program for middle and high schoolers in the community. We started this initiative to make public speaking education more accessible in our surrounding areas. The three of us have been competing in debate for years now and can positively attribute our growth and development as people to the confidence that public speaking has given us. Public speaking is an incredibly important skill that has not only made us comfortable taking part in interviews, speeches, and presentations but will be lifelong skills in all types of communication. Unfortunately, though, in the past couple of years, we noticed that public speaking and debate programs in our school district were getting massive budget cuts and were being restricted to the activities and tournaments that students were allowed to engage in. As debate students ourselves, this impacted us and our peers enormously. Due to the lack of opportunities for students to get involved in public speaking, the three of us wanted to create a space for kids to learn more and to help them gain confidence in this often scary field. To pursue this goal, we started holding week-long workshops for middle schoolers to introduce them to the fields of public speaking and competitive debate. Through these camps, we can work with kids and offer them the resources to become effective communicators. So far, we have worked with over 60 kids from 6th to 10th grade. Throughout these workshops, we teach critical communication skills, hold mini tournaments, play games, and grow kids’ confidence when presenting in front of others. We have also started speaking with local youth groups about the power of speaking up for your beliefs and are starting to extend our reach to elementary schools in the area. Our programs are far more accessible to local families than other debate camps due to the price. Competitive debate camps are a business, and it is hard to find a camp below 300 dollars per week, which excludes many low-income children from being able to gain experience in speech and debate. Our workshops are held for free or all priced affordably, and 100% of the money goes into donating supplies to local underfunded schools and food pantries. For example, we were able to donate over 75 pounds of food to our local food pantry due to our Thanksgiving workshop alone.
What are your plans for the future?
In the future, we want to expand our initiative to be able to serve even more students. Right now, we mostly only work with kids that are in Frisco and surrounding school districts because of our accessibility to venues and debate networks in this area. Hopefully moving forward, we would love to work with kids all over North Texas because we realize that public speaking education is something that is critical to kids regardless of where they live.
Because we cannot meet every student physically in person, this summer, we are launching a series of initiatives to virtually be able to assist as many students as possible! Between our upcoming blog, podcast, online workshops, and speech kits, kids will have a variety of ways to be able to glean valuable debate skills that they do not have to be in person for. At the end of the day, our goal is to make quality communicative education as accessible as possible, and by truly embracing the nature of our interconnected online world, we can make it happen!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @linguaspeechacademy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lingua-speech-academy
