Do You Have What It Takes?
Special Olympics has a leadership program called Global Messenger. You go for training for 2 days, 3 nights. We went to Bloomington-Normal, IL. There were presentations by the trainers (PowerPoint).
There were people I knew there, there were about 25 or 30 total athletes there.
Each athlete had to make a speech of about 2 - 3 minutes. I planned some of the speech ahead of time, but worked on it at the hotel using PowerPoint. We practiced the speeches the night before and the day of the speech. We were practicing our speech to a lamp in the hotel :) but it worked. Not that the lamp had much reaction ...
The night before I had butterflies. We went swimming but still had butterflies. Gayle wished us Goodnight on the phone, that was a memorable moment.
I had butterflies the morning of the speech. I didn't really figure it would be a success actually, which is how most people think. But it was an instant success. Troy cheered me on so much, it helped the speech be successful. People laughed, people cheered, people clapped, but ironically did not whistle.
Each speech had to have an audience-pleasing tag line. Mine was "be brave in the attempt" (that's part of the Special Olympics pledge).
Now I'm a Level 1 Global Messenger, like role-playing games, there's several levels. There are 10 at least. Now I can give more speeches when necessary at Special Olympics events.
I'm glad I did the training. I look forward to another opportunity whenever possible.
If you're thinking about becoming a Global Messenger, try your luck, it just might happen!
