CHENNAI: The Netherlands team won the Mini Worlds Chennai 2019, a first of its kind school style debating tournament, held here, while team from Hong Kong emerged runner-up. The three day event, which kicked off on July 19, was held at Arsha Vidya Mandir, Velachery while the final event was held at Ramada Plaza hotel on Sunday.
The debating tournament organised by Indian Schools Debating Society (ISDS), a not-for-profit organisation sponsored by Ramco Group of Companies, was a precursor to World Schools Debating Championship (WSDC) to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from July 24 to August 1, this year.
Fifteen teams participated 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 also participated in the event.
India Team managed to enter the semi-finals, but could not make it to the grand finals, the organisers said. The tournament attempts to popularise debating culture in India and give teams around the world a flavour of South Asia.
For the last one decade, ISDS has been organising such tournament, but this is for the first time that international teams from 12 countries participated in the event.
The Indian national team consists of debaters from Chennai, Jaipur and Mumbai. According to organisers, probably for the first time a completely visually impaired speaker, Bhavya Shah of Rao Junior College, Mumbai, who uses an accessibility-enabled laptop to follow other speeches, participated in the event. “It was a great experience participating in the event. The exposure will help me a lot in my future endeavours,” said Bhavya.
Ragini Srinivasan, chief programme coordinator, ISDS, said, “The Chennai event was a warm-up one for the teams, as all of them will be participating in the world championship in Thailand from July 24 to August 1”.
Nirmala Raja, chairperson of ISDS, expressed her happiness over the success of Mini Worlds Chennai tournament.