Proficient communication is a skill that everyone needs to develop.  Whether it’s giving a speech in elementary, high school or college, interviewing for a job, or giving a presentation, you need to know how to confidently speak in front of people.  Public speaking is a problem for many individuals in the nation and some even are afraid of it.  Using the 4-H curriculum for communications, we have developed a program that reaches every school district in the county. Through the County Speeches and Demonstrations Contest, students have the opportunity to prepare for a future of skilled communications and public speaking.  

We conducted “Communication Days” with all the 4^th- 5^th grade students in the county. We also conducted a “Communication Day” at two middle schools reaching a large portion of 6^th-8^th grade students as well. This puts our total for participating youth at almost 2,000. We take the top two speakers in each category to the county level which is held at Ashland Community and Technical College Technical Drive Campus. From there the top two in each category are allowed to participate at the District level, where only the top speaker moves on to the State Competition.  This program is conducted annually and we always have an excellent turnout for the county competition. Greenup County continues to be competitive at the state competition where we send an average ten speakers each year.  

Some of our volunteers who judged the same children at each level reported a great improvement in the quality of their speeches given from the school to the county and district levels.  It is our hope that these students, through participation in these events, can overcome some of their anxiety when speaking in public.