Breaking the 10-year drought for the Philippines in the International Public Speaking Competition in London, junior college student Jazmin Jabines emerged overall champion in the annual global public speaking contest hosted by the English-Speaking Union in London, United Kingdom, last week, May 14-18.
Jabines, a junior Business major from the University of the Philippines Diliman, bested over 50 other contestants from all over the world with her speech about Overseas Filipino Workers.
After two rounds of eliminations, Jabines advanced to the finals, along with representatives from China, Hong Kong, USA, Estonia, Lebanon, and South Korea. Each contestant was given 5 minutes to deliver a speech on the theme, “The only way to predict the future, is to invent it”.
Jabines, who joined the national search twice, delivered an emotional tale of her struggles with dealing with long-distance relationship with a relative overseas, “the Filipino diaspora is not just hard for those who leave, but for those who get left behind,” she said in her speech.
During the question and answer portion following each of the finalists’ speeches, Jabines was asked about her position on whether people should really work overseas or stay in their home countries given issues in patriotism, to which she replied: “It’s unfair to demand for these people to stay when there is an absence of economic opportunities, which they can find elsewhere.”
She added that overseas Filipinos are not unpatriotic, as they still find ways to celebrate parts of their culture, even despite their distance with their home country.
Jabines is the third Filipino to win the contest after Gian Karlo Dapul in 2008, and award-winning journalist Patricia Evangelista in 2004.
