***English text below. Remove this message when translating, otherwise the page may be overwritten:*** The official Agora Speakers Trophy Every year in Agora, we recognize the best speakers from our membership. The way our contests are structured, as well as our Contest Rulebook, represent our vision for Public Speaking as a tool that enables leaders to achieve their goals and effect a positive change in the world. You will see that we don't have a "generalistic speaking contest" because, for us, public speaking is a means to a goal, but not an end in itself. We currently have four thematic contests: Educational Speech Contest Storytelling Contest Humorous Speech Contest Social Awareness Speech Contest Some of the highlights of our contest system: Each contest is celebrated yearly, with the official contest season being from January 1st to the International Convention date. All speeches need to be original. All contests proceed in rounds, where each round has up to 10 contestants. The core contests are in English, but countries, regions, and groups of countries are free to celebrate contests in any language (for example, all German-speaking countries could have a German World Public Speaking contest) Our Financial Rules allow clubs and groups of clubs to sponsor contestants so that they do not have to cover the costs of participation themselves (travel, accommodation, etc.) We have special provisions for allowing people with disabilities, including blind and deaf people, to participate. To make sure that we don't develop an endogamic contest style where all speeches become clearly recognizable as "an Agora-type speech", judging at the higher levels is performed by external professionals that are not Agora members, such as journalists, media professionals, lawyers, scientists, etc. (depending on the type of the contest). Different Agora levels (clubs, regions, countries) can organize Special Contests (such as Evaluation, Improvisational Speaking, Powerpoint Karaoke, etc.), and we explicitly encourage that. The contest season for these special contests is from July 31st to December 31st. Formal Contest Rulebook Part 1 - Contest Structure Part 2 - Contest Conventions Part 3 - Contest Development Part 4 - Contest Judging Part 5 - Special Contests