At some point in your life, you may be called upon to speak on atopic, whether for

Fantastic news! We've Found the answer you've been seeking!

Question:

At some point in your life, you may be called upon to speak on atopic, whether for a personal or professional purpose, that is close to your heart. To be ready for thist ask, you will need to be able to share a well-organized, and well-supported message-one that effectively conveys information about yourself, and the issue of importance to you, while also successfully engaging a publi caudience.

Prompt

Record yourself presenting a 3-4 minute speech exploring a little about yourself and describing/exploring an issue/cause/problem for which you currently advocate or would like to advocate for. In this speech, you will explore how and why this advocacy is important to you. In addition to the video- recording of this presentation, you will also be submitting a fully-drafted copy of your speech.

The My Advocacy Speech will prepare you to unpack your own personal experience with advocacy, through a process of careful self-reflection, and sharing apersonal narrative, to effectively engage anaudience. Combined, these two tasks will help you creat a stronger foundation for later assignments and activities in the course (and beyond).

Advocacy can be thought of as one or more of the following components:

Advocacy is the promotion of an idea, cause, concept, or information
Advocacy includes actions toward a specific goal
Advocacy finds solutions to current problems

Topic Selection

Ultimately, this speech should be about something that is near and dear to your heart-something you feel strongly about; something for which you currently advocate for or would like to advocate for in the future. Thus, thetopic of your speech will be a personal one.

You may advocate for an issue/idea/movement/law/cause/concept of your choosing. Here are some ideas:

Education/training
Pre-K-12 Education or Higher Education
Children, youth, families
Student loans
Equal pay/ inequities
Healthcare equity
Local/global hunger/poverty
Cost of housing/healthcare

Socioeconomic status
Immigration
Criminal justice/policing
Military/veterans
Identity theft
Freedom of the press
Ending domestic violence
Voting
Transparency in government

Organization

Your advocacy speech should include the following:

Guideline	Description
Introduction + Hook	Introduce yourself to theaudience, including your name, the course that this speech is for, and the assignment. Find a way to hook your readers-ask a question, share an example, or include a quote (with attribution). Make sure your hook is directly relevant to your advocacytopic.
Advocacy Topic Description	Describe the issue/cause/problem for which you are advocating. Remember: youraudience may not be familiar with yourtopic, so provide enoughcontext that they can follow along with you, without issue.
Advocacy Narrative	Describe how and why this advocacy is important to YOU and to youraudience. Some questions to consider: Why does advocating for this cause/issue/problem/ matter to you? What information is important to share with theaudience, regarding thistopic, and your participation in it? What happens if no one advocates for this cause/issue/problem? Why should others be interested in thistopic and your advocacy?
Closing	Creat a closing that helps remind readers of the most important points shared during this speech. Do not directly repeat your opening-find a way to engage readers one last time, sharing the same information, but in a new and compelling way.