It says that laughter is the best medicine. Of course, laughing at a joke made by someone else is good but how about making others laugh through your words? Or can you evaluate your friend’s speech and give proper comments? If so, “Enliven” is the stage for you.

In a chaotic time, when students, both in schools and universities are fed up stuck at home due to COVID 19, just staring at their computers with lectures going on and on and on… with the burden of assignments on your shoulders and deadlines to catch up, the Gavel Club of University of Colombo might just know how to brighten up your day. Enliven ‘21 is an All-Island Humorous Speech and Evaluation competition, which is one of the major events conducted by Gavel UoC. The aim of organizing this event is to develop the oratory skills as well as the communication capabilities of the young speakers.

This competition consists of two divisions as Humorous speech contest and the evaluation contest. Humor is something that comes naturally to us humans. The ability to make people amuse and laugh through the use of language while inspiring your audience is a gift. This is the scope of a humorous speech. Efficiently being able to appraise a given speech in a short time is the basis of evaluations.

Enliven ‘21 is the third milestone of a series of successful encounters that was initiated in 2017. The preceding Enliven successfully happened in 2019 and with that same spirit, Enliven ‘21 came into effect. As the first step of this event, an organizing committee was appointed consisting of the project chair, two co-chairs and four efficient teams named as the Marketing, Finance, Logistics, and the Delegates. Each of the teams worked tirelessly to accomplish their tasks and to make this event possible. The competition was decided to be held under two age categories such as the school category and university category. Once the registrations were opened, the Organizing Committee members worked hard to recruit more competitors for the competition. Organizing the competition via a virtual platform was a novel experience to everyone.

The Finance and Logistics teams worked hard to obtain the sponsorships and amidst the difficult time due to COVID 19, they successfully accomplished their target which was a huge strength to organize the contest in a decent manner. Having London Stock Exchange Group as our silver sponsor gave us the boost that we needed and without them, this event would not have been possible. Having ChoKoLAATe as the Official Youth Partner and XpressJobs, perabeats and NOWYOUSEEME as our digital Media Partners gave Gavel UoC a reach it never had before.

The marketing team was busy publishing humorous quotes, evaluation tips, encouragement videos and so on to attract more contestants. Delegates team nicely handled the registrations and they kept the registered contestants updated on everything while conducting practice sessions.

Next big event was the Workshop which was conducted to support the contestants. Two eminent resource persons were invited and the workshops for both humorous speech and evaluations were held on the 02nd of January 2021 from 4-6 pm. The workshop for Humorous speech was conducted by DTM Farhaz Farouk on the topic, “Don’t try to be funny, ok?” and the workshop for evaluations was conducted by DTM Arshad Nizam on the topic, “Acing Contest Evaluations”. The workshops concluded successfully giving more tips and guidelines for the competitors to polish their speeches and evaluation skills. These workshops were held via ZOOM and were live streamed on Facebook by our workshop media partner, FOS Media. The workshop would not have been possible without our workshop partner, Union Bank.

The preliminaries were held on 9th and 10th of January 2021 via ZOOM and the organizing committee did a great deal of organizing so that the event would go smoothly. On the 9th of January, the “prelims” of Humorous speech was held for both school and university categories. For humorous speech contest in both school and University categories, contestants were divided into several breakout rooms which included a contest chair, timer and judges. The duration of the speech was 5-7 minutes and the contestants were judged upon their speech content, speech delivery as well as the appropriateness and correctness in language.

The Evaluation contest was also held in a similar manner, a toastmaster made a speech in the main zoom session and then the contestants were given 5 minutes to prepare their notes for evaluation. After, they were assigned to waiting rooms where they were kept under the supervision by the Seargent-at-arms to make sure that contestants were abiding the contest rules. Then, contestants, one by one were taken infront of a panel of judges. The contestants had to give their evaluation on the test speech given by Toastmaster within 1-3 minutes. Winners of each of the categories were announced at the end of the day via flyers which were posted in all social media platforms of Gavel UoC and Enliven ’21.

After successful preliminary rounds, we set our eyes on the semi- finals and finals which are up ahead. Are you excited to hear from the best humorous speaker of the year? Can’t hold back your excitement to listen to the best evaluator of the year? Just wait! Semi-finals are coming up in a few days and you can tune into the grand finale of Enliven’21 on the 23rd of January at 1 pm through the livestream done by our digital media partners. So be sure to catch us then and stay tuned with Gavel UoC and Enliven’21 for latest updates!