How to Defend your Opinion: BEST Foundation's First Summer Camp on Public Expression and Critical Inquiry was a Major Success
From August 1 through August 7, BEST Foundation hosted its first ever Summer Camp. The Camp, aimed at developing participant’s critical thinking and public speaking skills, took place at the Bulgarian Red Cross’s National Training Center in Lozen and gathered 29 participants from all over Bulgaria.
“The camp was a surreal experience - a memory that I will keep and cherish forever.
It allowed me to surround myself with amazing people who helped me to improve not only as a speaker, but also as an individual.” - Kadir Kadir, FLS "Ekzarh Yosif" - Razgrad
Each day, participants attended lectures organized by camp director Dr. Timothy Yaczo, a professor at the University of Amsterdam. He taught them how to properly organise and articulate their thoughts, as well as how to defend their point of view. After the morning theoretical lessons, the participants had the opportunity to apply what they learned in afternoon debate exercises, and then to relax with all kinds of sports activities. On each of the days we had guest lecturers who talked about various topics related to public speaking. Dr. Ron Harvey from American University in Bulgaria lead an improvisation workshop. Haley Kranstuber Horstman (Ph.D, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) talked about communication theory, Jesse Scinto from Columbia University discussed non-verbal communication and Justin Foote, (PhD, Northern State University) who talked about debate. We were also joined by Rada Kaneva, a Program Officer at the Fulbright Commission, who helped supervise campers in their practice debates.
On Friday the participants were divided into teams and debated against each other. This time the debates took place one after another as the other teams evaluated their peers' skills. After that, we took a hike to the Lozen Monastery "St. Spas", and an official closing ceremony was held later in the evening, where we gave out awards for best team, best speaker, most improved participant, as well as most witty participant.
“BEST’s camp was the perfect combination of fun and learning. Although I have competed in debates and original oratory before, my skills and knowledge of them have improved significantly. In addition to learning, our mentors also offered us various activities that helped us relax and brought us closer together. An unforgettable experience!” - Ekaterina Valeva, Foreign Language School, Plovdiv
The camp received positive feedback from all the participants based on pre-post surveys and as a result we would like to make it an annual event hoping we receive the financial support to do so. The ability to express and defend one's opinion is applicable in all walks of life and, with increasing access to unreliable sources of information, it is becoming all the more relevant.
This event was held with the full financial sponsorship and support of the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission.
