Meet Grand Finalist, Thara Ajanaku

We are delighted to share that this has been the biggest year ever for Jack Petchey’s Speak Out Challenge. Up to 30,000 students have been trained in over 500 schools across all of London and Essex.

Jack Petchey’s Speak Out Challenge provides year 10 students in state schools across London and Essex with public speaking and communication training to increase their confidence, sense of agency and drive to make a difference in society.

During the academic year, over 500 schools have received a free one-day public speaking workshops for their students. The student’s confidence in speaking to an audience, without notes, is measured at the beginning and at the end of the day. During 2022-2023 76% of students have increased their confidence to stand up and talk to a group of people. At the end of the day, every school nominates one student to go on to a Regional or Digital Final, where they compete again other school finalists and their speeches are judged based on content delivery, structure and positive impact by a panel of esteemed judges. After going on to win the semi-finals, our 15 inspirational, articulate, and impressive speakers are now ready to present their speech to you!

We will celebrate the achievements of these awe-inspiring young people in the heart of London’s West End at Cambridge Theatre on Monday 10th July and crown the 2023 “Speak Out” Champion!

In no particular order, meet 2023 Grand Finalist Thara Ajanaku! 

Their speech ‘How do you feel about your body?’ earned them and their school, Haberdashers Hatcham College, first place in the Lewisham Regional Final. Thara would like us all to dig deep to really understand our relationship with our bodies.

We asked Thara, what three items or people would you choose to take to a desert island and why? 

The obvious – phone, laptop, but I would also take my mum. Phone and a laptop because you can do almost anything you need with them, and my mum, because she’ll keep me sane out there.

What is your favourite saying or quote and why?

It’s an Albert Einstein one, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” It’s ridiculously simple, and ridiculously easy to see how it plays out in day to day life. I’ll often catch myself wondering why things aren’t changing in my reality, only to realise that I’ve been making the very same mistakes that caused that reality.

What three top tips on life would you give a Year Seven student? 

1. Know yourself. It’s a life-long journey, sure, but the sooner you can identify what you like, don’t like, what you want, how you feel, what your boundaries are, the sooner you can create a life that makes sense and feels better to you. 2. Stick up for yourself. Goes with the first one. To be able to stick up for yourself you have to be able to know where your boundaries are first. If you believe in something, say it. If a boundary has been crossed, say it. It’s definetly not easy in the beginning, but it sends a signal to yourself that you do respect your feelings enough to vocalise them, and to me, that is a form of self love. The world can be a brutal place sometimes, and in times like those, you need to be able to rely on both those who care for you and love you, as well as yourself. 3. Take on new oppourtunities that come your way. It’s year 7. Nothing is set in stone yet. Take this as an opportunity to try new things. Go talk to that new person. Go join that club. Go take on a new hobby. It’s okay if it doesn’t work out, we’re just testing what does and doesn’t, and you’ve got plenty of time to do that these next few years.

You could have made a speech anything in the world. Why did you speak about this one subject? 

Our own ideas and outlooks about our own bodies is not only something that is integral to our own identities, struggles and successes, but it’s been a predominant, reoccurring theme within my life, since I was little. It’s forced me to have to dig deep into the way I view my own body, and it has forced me to challenge the beliefs that other people have instilled into my psyche. I’ve dug deep on this topic, and I want to guide others in the direction to do the same.

Why do you think it’s important for young people, like you, to share their stories?

I think that programmes like these set up young people for better, more successful lives from the get go. If we are told from the get go that what we have to say is not valid, that our experiences don’t matter, our that our opinions are not cared for, we will grow up never trusting our own gut feelings, or the way we view the world. That is a recipe for disaster. Programmes like this instill the opposite of that, right from the get go. The more we share our stories and learn that our opinions hold weight, are valued, are important, the more likely we are to go out into the world as adults with confidence and trust in oneself. That is a recipe for success.

How could this experience help you further any passions you have?

At heart, I am a performer, an entertainer. I can do all sorts of things, and fit myself into all sorts of different boxes, but at the end of the day, I will always have an undying urge to entertain. There is nothing more fulfilling to me than putting my heart and soul into a project, only for an audience to gain value from it. I think I will spend a great portion of my life simply creating, producing, and expressing myself through this medium. This experience is a direct example of me creating something, from the very core of me, and sharing it with an audience that (I hope!) is able to gain value from.

Outside of delivering a speech, how do you think this experience could be helpful now or in the future?

As mentioned in the previous question, I get to create something personal to me, and boost it out to an audience. That’s basically what I’m going to do for most of my life. The experience I get from here will help me in skills of performance, managing stress, stagefright or anxiety, and simply being able to deliver a message in a way an audience can gain value from. These are skills that I will need for the rest of my life.

And finally, how would you like people to think / act differently from hearing your story?

Bodies are complicated. Thoughts are complicated. When we mix them, it becomes double complicated. But we should never forget how much our bodies do for us. And how much we owe it to ourselves to dig a little deeper into how and why we feel the way we do about this essential, integral part of us, keeping us alive.

Watch Thara‘s winning speech: