CHENNAI: A first of its kind school style debating tournament, Mini Worlds Chennai 2019, was held at Arsha Vidya Mandir, Velachery here, on Friday. The two-day event, which will conclude on Saturday, is a precursor to World Schools Debating Championship (WSDC) to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from July 24 to August 1, this year.
During the two-day international event, 15 teams will participate in the competition, including 12 national teams from India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Hong Kong, England, Wales, Ireland, Netherlands, Mexico, Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand. Apart from the Indian WSDC team, three development teams from India will also be participating, as India is the host country, making it four Indian teams in total. These teams include some of the best debating squads in the world.
The event was organised by Indian Schools Debating Society (ISDS), a not-for-profit organisation sponsored by Ramco Group of Companies. This tournament attempts to give teams around the world a flavour of South Asia, and a taste of the debating culture in India The four best teams will make it to the semi-finals, the best two to the Grand Final, which is scheduled to take place on Sunday, July 21 at Hotel Ramada, Guindy.
The Indian national team consists of debaters from Chennai, Jaipur and Mumbai. It will be the first Indian team and one of the first debate teams in the world to select and train a completely visually impaired speaker, Bhavya Shah of Rao Junior College, Mumbai, who uses an accessibility-enabled laptop to follow other speeches and give his own eight-minute speeches perfectly from memory, the organisers said.