In America, the fear of public speaking is more prominent than even the fear of death. However, this public speaking event is helpful to get rid of that fear by introducing the art of the speech to students at a young age. They will use their experiences to become better speakers, and a new wave of leaders will emerge.

The Junior Board thanks Mrs. Meilee Zheng from Weichert Realtors (973-376-4545, http://www.meileerealtor.com/) for her generous support. Please follow our future event announcements.

President Austin and Vice President Emily opening speeches

http://youtu.be/V1ghEBXELjo

Certificate presentation to speakers

http://youtu.be/XUbFmdc3z1A

Selling Macy’s card for fundraising

http://youtu.be/maZRfQLsClQ

Hey everyone! I'm Emily Wang, and I'm the Vice President of the Junior Board of OCA-National New Jersey branch. Before I talk about today’s events, I’d like to give a brief overview of what the Junior Board is. The OCA-New Jersey Junior Board is a branch of the OCA composed of middle and high school students dedicated to building the next and first major wave of Chinese American leaders. Our objective is to get our peers to pioneer community services, become involved in basic government functions, and practice public speaking. These skills are fundamental to giving us, the future generation of leaders, voices in the world, and our board is committed at work to generate this success. This year’s dedicated and generally awesome board members include Treasurer Chris Sun, PR/reporter Christine Yang, secretary Arnold Jia, and President Austin Jia, who unfortunately was unable to make it here today. For all of you, he requested me to carry his message:

Hi everyone, my name is Austin Jia, and it's great to be talking to the audience from Boston! I can't really see you, but I know that we have a huge turnout today, as well as a huge variety! Judging from the registration list, there are grade school students, middle school students, their parents who dragged them here, and siblings who decided to tag along. But whatever your story is, whether you took your time out of this summer afternoon willingly or not, I promise that you're in for something truly fulfilling. As Laura will explain, the majority of the day will be composed of you participating in the "ID Bag" speech activity. I actually don't really like calling it an activity, because it's much more like a social icebreaker that will hopefully make the speaker feel more comfortable. Even though you might not realize it at this point, using this activity to expand your comfort zone will help tremendously in establishing more important communications in the future, including possibly interning and government jobs, though it's way too early to worry about. The bottom line is, speaking is so deeply important and will touch upon so many aspects of your lives that it'd be awesome if everyone could start becoming acquainted with it at an early age. At the moment my makeshift speech is being read, I'll probably be in the middle of a debate, shouting at my opponent and wishing I had practiced speaking from much earlier on. That being said, enjoy today’s event, as I'm sure you all will. If you enjoy it, my colleagues and I will certainly review your feedback and mold further projects. Thank you, and have a great time!