‘Dream Big’ is an annual workshop series primarily focused on motivating and preparing aspiring speakers who are competing for Speech Olympiad, the premier Intra University Speech competition organised by Gavel Mora. Dream Big has been the centre of inspiration as many speakers need that little extra confidence boost and the speakers who have shared their experiences have definitely made an impact on those who participated in the workshop. Having international level champion speakers adds a lot of recognition to this workshop.
A retrospect on the previous workshops
- 2022 – The World Champion of Public Speaking 2021, Verity Price graced the session virtually as the guest speaker. It was held on 12th August 2022 via Zoom
- 2021 – The guest speaker was World Champion of Public Speaking 2014, Dhananjaya Hettiarachchi. Due to the pandemic situation, the session was held virtually on the Zoom platform on the 24th of July.
- 2020 – This year was a special one as it was the first time a guest speaker outside Sri Lanka was invited. The speaker was none other than the 2019 World Champion of Public Speaking, Aaron Beverly from the U. S. A. Held virtually on Zoom on the 5th of July, this was also the first time Dream Big was open to Gaveliers of other universities and there was a participation of 250.
- 2018 – This consisted of two workshops focusing separately on prepared speaking and impromptu speaking. The prepared speech session was conducted by Kaishika Rodrigo, Sri Lanka’s first female finalist in a Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, on the 6th of September. Following this, the impromptu session was conducted by none other than Table Topics Champion Sandun Fernando, on the 13th of September.
- 2017 – This was held under 3 sessions on a weekly basis from the 24th of August to the 7th of September.
- Never too late. Back to Basics – Sandun Fernando
- Crafting Memorable Speeches – Chathura K. Soorya-Arachchi
- Set the Stage on Fire – Bimsara Premarathna
- 2016 – This was held under 4 sessions on a weekly basis from the 11th of October to the 19th of November.
- Master the Impromptu – Tharindu Amarasekere
- Set the Stage on Fire – Shanuki De Alwis
- The Winning Speech – Sandun Fernando
- The Power of Story – Kaishika Rodrigo
Dream Big as the name suggests does not only make the listener dream bigger on achieving big things on stage but gives an adequate platform to learn and be inspired. The opportunity to interact with these esteemed individuals adds a lot of quality to the preparation of the aspiring speakers and raises the bar very high at Speech Olympiad. Sometimes, it is not what you say that matters but how you say it and Gavel Mora has always organised very successful sessions of Dream Big.