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2006 Awards Week in D.C.
Banquet Speech by Shelby Williams
Each year during the annual National Peace Essay Contest Awards Program in Washington, D.C., students select two of their peers to represent them at the awards banquet. This year, Shelby Williams from Hawaii and Eugene Kim from Minnesota were chosen. Below is Shelby's speech delivered at the banquet on Thursday, June 22, 2006, where each winner was presented with an awards certifcate by Dr. Richard Solomon and the three national-level winners were announced. Each student representative spoke about their personal experience. Read Eugene's Speech.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Shelby Williams and I am from Hawaii. Thank you all for attending tonight and I hope that you are all enjoying your stay in D.C. It is a great honor for me to have been chosen by my peers to speak to you tonight. I won’t take too long because I know that my fellow essay winners have been listening to speeches all week so I will try to keep this short and sweet. The past few days have been engaging, inspirational, even a little tiring, but very fun at the same time. I can honestly say that it has made my transitioning summer between high school and college the best of my life so far. My fellow essay contest winners and I were brought here for our winning essays on nuclear nonproliferation. A topic that many of us before the contest knew nothing about. However, through time, hard work, and a number of informing speakers we learned how nuclear non proliferation is a serious issue and with the current situation in Iran, it is more important than ever.
Last night my fellow essay contest winners and I were taken to see a play at the Round House Theater called a “A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage”. After the play a woman walked up to me and asked me where I was from and why I was there. After answering her, she asked me how long we had all known each other. When I replied that we had all just met Sunday, she seemed surprised and said that it seemed like we have known each other for years. This encounter made me think about how this awards program is not only an educational experience, but a vital social lesson as well.
I remember the first day, Sunday, and the uncertainty that came with being away from home by myself for the first time, along with over forty people who just minutes before I didn’t even know existed. I think that we all felt nervous, excited, and perhaps a bit shy, not knowing what to expect. It was the same feeling that you get the first day of attending a new school, a new job, or meeting a new person. We all come from different states, backgrounds, religions, ethnic groups, and social circles. But, within the first few minutes, I could see and feel the shyness quickly melting away as we all began to bond. Despite our differences, we made friends, shared life stories, talked about our families, passed a few notes, and told a few secrets.
This bonding, this human connection that we have all made is perhaps one of the most important lessons that this awards program has given us. Because it is this ability to connect with people who may at first seem so foreign that is a major lesson in peace. The ability to embrace our differences and find what is similar is what we all hope for when bringing people together. This is something that must be experienced first hand. It cannot be learned from any book or even in a class at Harvard or Georgetown. It only comes from the school of life experience.
The souvenirs that we will take home from this week will be proof of our journey years from now. However, the t-shirts, the photographs, and the pamphlets cannot match the value of the memories that they bring forth. These memories will make us remember the people that we met along the way and the experiences that we shared with them. I will remember the day that I ate dinner at the Taj Mahal restaurant and the conversations that I had with Eugene from Minnesota and Sid from Oklahoma (who will forever be my number one Oklahomie). I will remember panic on the day that me and my roommate Renee from Arkansas failed to hear our alarms and almost missed the bus if it were not for our group leader Andrea St. John waking us up. And I will remember going on the bus tour with them to see my future home, known to most people as the White House. I will look back fondly on these memories, these faces, voices, and unique personalities and hope that they all still remember them as fondly as I will.
And so it is on behalf of myself and my fellow essay winners that I must personally thank the United States Institute of Peace and its many staff members, Raina Kim, Andrea St. John, Brian Lobel, Laura Stanley, Mike Huston, Ethan Schechter, Pamela Aall, Mike Leckson, Jeff Helsing and the students from UVA, Gaulladet University, the Kellogg Conference Center and its staff, and all of those who made this experience possible, mahalo. You have all been responsible for help making these memories possible and the memories soon to come from the friendships that you have helped create. I’m sure that I am not alone in saying that our parting tomorrow will be a bit hard and that we will all miss those that we have bonded with and have became so close to over the past few days. But luckily there is still Facebook and Myspace and even email. And if you feel a bit old school you can even use the mail box. Take care, please keep in touch, and enjoy the rest of your evening.
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