The Take Off of our PSU Rocket.

Intro

When you break the wings of a bird, you take its freedom to fly. Just as when a girl’s opportunity for education is taken away, you are taking chances away from her to be something great in the future. We are Project Stand Up (PSU), a project that STANDS UP for girls.

Behind the Scenes

The process of squeezing the juice from our brain to prepare for the launch of our project was one of the best experiences that we have been through. We faced many

challenges along the way, some more difficult than others. Writing our individual speeches was definitely one of those challenges. However, what was more difficult was summarising our three year journey of  Project Stand up in only 45 minutes. Each member of the team chose to share a different chapter of our journey, such as; introducing our problem and our solution, behind the scenes of our hard work, the application, and finally our vision.

We were lucky to have Ajeet who helped us prepare for the launch. Ajeet is a volunteer from the speech academy who provided assistance, support and advice on how to improve our public speaking skills.The project managers, Jessica and Lucy have continued to provide us with constant support and unlimited feedbacks as a means of preparing us for both our presentations and speeches. Our Champions (change agents in our community) have also played a vital role by preparing their part of showing the app to the Launch event guests and conversing with them about Project Stand Up.

It was tough, practicing over and over, but as they say “The fruits of hard work are sweeter than the sweetest of nectars”, and it surely was!

Our speeches

Finally, the moment that we had all been waiting for had come. Our arrival at the Australian High Commission. We were nervous of how huge the space was and at the same time amazed by how well the embassy was designed. Our project was funded by innovationxchange of the  Australian Department of Foreign Affairs.

The Australian High Commissioner himself  welcomed everyone who attended, including delegates from various embassies, our project partners, our community board, our parents, and our supporters. His excellency continued to introduce what our project is about, how our focus on gender equality will help girls in their education and open up opportunities for them. There was one particular sentence he said that we felt very empowered by in which he mentioned our role in changing the world for our community. The way in which this change could expand globally if the youth themselves take initiative in improving our world. To hear his excellency speak so highly of our 3 years old project in such a way, touched us all.

When it was our turn to speak, we felt very proud and confident to talk in front of our parents. Photos and videos were taken throughout our presentation, we felt like important people speaking on the stage. We made the audience laugh, think and feel each word that we said. We became the highlight of the day!!

Conclusion

“BRAVO! AMAZING! YOU GUYS LEFT ME SPEECHLESS! YOUR PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS WERE...WOW !“ These were some of the comments we got from everyone, who did not expect this level of performance from us, our community members and our parents telling us how proud we made them feel. All in all, our champions did a great job in presenting the App to the guests, we received great feedback about the app (our solution to the three levels of problem; individual, household, and community  that we found). People were astounded by the fact that we have designed an app that is available on and find in Google Play Store!

We had mixed feelings of happiness and a sense of pride. The fruit of our hard work was so sweet that we all will never forget the taste of it!