Speak Up (2020)
Good afternoon, everyone.
Now, we live in 2020. 21st century. Have you ever known about 21st century competencies? Communication is one of them. That is based on the framework 21st century by World Economic Forum. We are hoped to be able to face complex challenge in this era with that competencies. Ability to communicate with a lot of kind of people, even people come from different background with us. Delivering informations in appropriate way. That is why good communication is needed in this century. And speaking up is one of the ways to communicate.
In this era, globalization lets our voice to be heared by people around the world. We don't have to go abroad, but we can see what happened in this world today. Do you know where? Yes, social media. Freedom of speech is also applied in social media. However, nowadays mostly people can communicate, but not all people can do good communication. For the evidence, verbal bullying happen in social media. There are people who bully each other and say hate speech to other people account. Based on the research by Polling Indonesia and Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia, there are 49% netizen in 2019 have ever been bullying target in social media. Irony. There are 31,6% of that bullying victim didn't do anything to the bullying. This kind of problem also happens in sexual harassment. There are 348.448 (three hundred forty eight thousand four hundred forty eight) cases of sexual harassment in 2017 based on data from Komnas Anti Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan. Sexual harassment victims mostly didn't speak up their case because of victim blaming.
Irony.
Bullying and sexual harassment are just the example of violence. Violence is kind of wrong thing and there are still many wrong things in this world. We should prevent it happen again and again. We should protect our next generation from the same cases. But, if the victims didn't report their cases, how will this violence meet the end? So, speak up! Speaking up can build togetherness among the victims. Speaking up improves people consciousness against violence. Speaking up can make sure public that violence or any wrong things in this world is serious.
We have known that speaking up is so important. Then it relates to my existence here. I think public speaking gives me space to speak up. So, I want to have good public speaking skill, especially in english, because yea, english is the first international language, right? Maybe soon my opinion is heard by people around the world, who knows? But until now, I feel my skill is not good enough. So that’s why I take this class. I want to surround myself with people who also have similar intention to learn more about english public speaking. I want to challenge myself to speak up about any topic, any theme. I want to encourage myself to be confident while my voice is listened to a lot of people.
Now, we live in 2020. 21st century. And, you still don't aware to speak up? Come on, wake up.
