WORLD SPEECH DAY - 15th March 2017 World Speech Day is dedicated to celebrating speeches and speech making. There will be a host of live speaking events, taking place across the world. These events may be small and local, or large and global. They could be at a school in London, or a church in Mexico, or at the UN General Assembly. Anyone can apply to hold a WSD event and, in addition, we will invite organisations in different sectors and with different outlooks to host events. Each WSD gathering will follow a simple format: 8 invited speakers will give a short, 5 minute speech; these will be followed by an open mike session. President Kennedy once said that “the only reason to make a speech is to change the world.” World Speech Day will be fashioned around a simple theme: Change The World. Everyone who takes part in World Speech Day will be encouraged to put forward their ideas on how to make the world better. WSD can act as a source for new thinking – releasing the “wisdom of crowds” – gathering ideas from the unexpected, usually unheard voices of Everyman. It is about tapping into the truly original and inspirational – and then making these voices available. Events will be recorded on video (wherever possible and however simply) and will form a unique resource, made available on wide range of platforms, such as a free website and YouTube channel. Although World Speech Day will, in one sense, be joyously open – anyone can hold an event – there will also be a number of core events at specific locations where great speeches have been made: Gettysburg, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the courtyard at Fontainebleau, the campus at Stanford University, Brandenburg Gate, Westminster Hall, outside the Supreme Court in South Africa, the British Mission in Bangalore and so on. The events at these famous sites will be hosted by WSD. World Speech Day is a Not-for-Profit organisation. Come Join Us!