It was through bleery eyes at about midnight last Thursday night that I found out that I would be one of the chosen few to speak at the 9th Annual WIP Congressional Forum. I read the email, twice, and then thought, “I’m tired, I’ll think about this tomorrow.” For those of you who know me well, this is something I do quite often when it comes to my opinions. I’m not one to rock the boat, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t speak up when I see someone being taken advantage of, or being run over the top of. WIP is such a whirlwind of events, it would be hard to describe everything and do each individual moment justice, or to even work out how I feel about the things that have happened over the last 4 weeks and the friendships I have made. But I have made some incredible friendships.
Last Thursday the group took a big step and decided to sit down and discuss who we are, where we come from and what we see as the issues at home. Now to any other group this wouldn’t be such a problem, the SAWIPers seemed to do it with relative ease, but we are from Ireland and Northern Ireland, and that in itself presents a problem. But we did it. We each took our 3 minutes and layed out our thoughts and views with incredible honesty and courage. After the talk, and ALL the emails leading up to it, I went home, well and truly drained of all my energy, only to read my emails and find that I was to have my ‘leadership moment’ this week. Oh Joys. Worse was to come. The topic was to be The Good Friday Agreement 10 years on. Disaster. I’ll be honest and say that after the talk on Thursday, the last thing I wanted to do was write a speech on the GFA. I’m not a political person, I know very little about politics in Northern Ireland, I’ve actively made a choice to steer clear of it and therefore I didn’t feel qualified to stand up and talk about it in front of WIP, SAWIP, host families, intern supervisors and a couple of Congressmen thrown in for good measure. I panicked, then I ignored the fast approaching draft deadline, then I panicked some more when the deadline came and went and I was still staring at a blank computer screen where my speech was meant to be. I seriously considered pulling out of the event, I told Megan and Kieran how uncomfortable I was with the topic. Give me Guantanamo Bay, give me the problems in the Middle East, but do not give me Northern Ireland! The final version of my speech changed an hour before I spoke, and even then, sitting on the podium, I was changing words here and there.
The words and the sentiment that became my speech are not my own, I cannot take credit for them. My speech was a group effort, when I was writing it, I thought about everything that had been said on Thursday night and tried to do the group justice. So credit ultimately must go to them. Credit must also go to JC and Kieran for all their support and encouragement over the past few days. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!
When you read my speech, picture it like this; Me standing behind a podium on which the stamp of Congress is hanging on by a wing and a prayer (if it falls, Andy may just lose his job!!) a room full of people clearly tired of standing for about an hour and half by the time I get up to speak and JC, Phil, Heather and a couple of other people going mad with camera flashes. Oh, and as I’m so nervous, I trip over just about every 2nd word!
Ok now I think you're ready to read it............
