On Sunday January 28th at the Portopia Hotel in Kobe, our club's member, K San, participated in the 31st Japan-America Society of Kobe English Recitation Contest for High Schooh Freshmen Finals after having been selelected as one of 13 finalists from the 51 students who participated in the selection match on November 23rd last year. Wonderfully, K San received second prize - the Consul General's Award!

The speech for this year's final was Malala Yousafzai's one given at the United Nations in 2013. K San had practiced hard, and so had perfect memorization, intonation, and so on. When practicing, K San had been focusing on giving a powerful delivery and had researched more about Malala's situation to deepen understanding of her feelings and situation.

At the contest, all members delivered their recitations very well and the judges commented that in recent memory, this was the highest level competition that they had attended. Because of the high level, three third place prizes were awarded, and the audience were wondering which fantastic speeches would be picked for the remaining prizes. We were very happy that K San was chosen for second place and the Consul General's representative presented the award on the consul general's behalf saying that K San had given an incredibly powerful performance.

Congratulations K San!!!