In a phone interview with Crystal Newman on RX Radio, Shakira Nakalema informed that had she not attended a school with compulsory public speaking classes, she wouldn't have realized her passion as a debater.
“In my primary, I was shy and I couldn't even debate. But when I joined high school, I decided to be part of leadership and it was a very tough time because it was compulsory for everyone whether you were a leader or not to be part of public speaking,” Nakalema said.
She added that contesting to become her school court’s clerk further got into leadership training, debating and polished her public speaking skills to a point that she got noticed by her teachers.
“My teachers started noticing and commending me. It gave me the thought that I can still do much. So in senior two I was like, I can't be left out when people are going out to other schools for competitions. So I went, we started winning and I was like this is my passion. That’s how my passion started growing even when I joined campus,” she recalled.
Shakira says that although she was caught up with her accounting course at university, she was convinced by a friend to join the debate society.
She went on to encourage schools to include the policy in their schools’ programmes since she was hailed by people from a number of schools about her debating and oratory skills that many thought she had attended a prominent school.
“Schools differ but it would be a big encouragement to if they taught these things to the young people because personally I wouldn't realize my passion or that I could actually debate but because of the school’s policy, I was given a route to where I was supposed to be,” she emphasized.
Shakira, now a team leader of Elle Parle Women’s Open 2020 that held its first ever women dominated tournament, together with her friends decided that they as women create a platform to solve challenges of young people especially women through intellectual discourse.
Shakira also owns a kits collection, an online business that she started during the Covid 19 lockdown and MS fashion that was inspired by her husband who was also her first customer.
The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman airs every Weekday from 4-5pm on RX Radio.
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