Yogyakarta, 8 September 2019—Eloquence in public speaking is indeed an important asset. Hence, International Relations English Competition (IREC) 2019 was held in order to improve the English public speaking skills of high school students. “Harmonizing Humanity to Work Alongside the Industrial Revolution 4.0” was the grand theme of this year’s edition of IREC. IREC itself is one of the programmes of the Association of International Relations Students, and was consisted of debate, storytelling and speech competitions. This event was held from the 6th until the 8th of September.
Charissa Patricia and Aldo Rafi, the President and Vice-President of IREC respectively, led a 99-person team in organizing IREC 2019. There was also a seminar session that featured several keynote speakers, such as Budiman Sudjatmiko (Innovator 4.0 Indonesia), Aditya Percaya (Youth of Indonesia) and Tony Seno (Sumber Kreasi). This seminar session was open for public and was held at the West Hall of Fisipol UGM.
27 debate teams, 24 storytelling teams and 31 speech teams participated in IREC 2019. In order to assess the performance of the participants, numerous judges with various backgrounds took part in this event. For the debate competition, the judges hailed from the English Debating Society of UGM, while the storytelling competition was assessed by the representatives of Teater Selasar of Fisipol and IONs. Meanwhile, for the speech competition, representatives from the Center for Digital Society and IONs took part, as well as Heidira Witra Hadayani, the winner of Fisipol’s most outstanding student award.
Ainin Fahirah, one of the participants of IREC 2019, stated that several high-achieving schools participated in this event. At the end of the event, the winners of the debate, storytelling and speech competitions competed with each other to win the grand prize: a fully funded trip to participate in the Asia International Model United Nations in Thailand. A participant of the debate competition stated that “IREC is for those who seek challenges, while another participant conveyed that “IREC is not for newbies.” This event was closed with the announcement of the winners of each competition. Similar to the previous years, IREC 2019 was held successfully.