Hallo teman-teman..Setiap hari Senin di SMP PL selalu mengadakan upacara bendera. Salah satu tujuannya adalah untuk meningkatkan jiwa nasionalisme peserta didik. Selain itu, dengan upacara diharapkan agar peserta didik belajar untuk bertanggung jawab, disiplin, dan percaya diri.

Petugas upacara setiap hari Senin selalu bergantian dari setiap kelas, yang membuat berbeda dengan upacara biasanya adalah kesempatan pesera didik untuk berpidato menggunakan bahasa Inggris. Salah satu pidato yang disampaikan teman-teman kita ketika upacara seperti berikut

Good morning judges, friends, and fellow contestants. My name is Audrey and I’m representing SMP Pangudi Luhur Jakarta for today’s speech contest. The topic that I’m going to talk about is I’m proud to be Indonesian Youth. The reason that I choose to contemplate about this specific topic is because I personally feel that this is the most relevant one yet. With us undergoing the phase of youth right now, I feel that most of us need to distinguish the meaning of youth itself.

First of all, we need to know the definition. Now, according to United Nations, YOUTH is best understood as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood to adulthood’s independence. Age is the easiest way to define this group; more exactly is around the age of 13-24 years old. ‘Youth’ is often referred to a person between the ages of leaving compulsory education, and finding their first job. Or, in more simple words according to Oxford, youth is a period between childhood and adult age. From what I have read, I came into the conclusion that youth is the middle part between childhood to adulthood, it’s a place where you can truly choose who do you want to be and what do you want to do because you’re old enough to make your own choices but simply not enough to know everything in life.

I feel that a lot of Indonesian youths are not proud of their country. As a teenager of Z generation, I have big interest in using internet in my daily life, or I can say I use internet in hourly or even minute’s basis. From blogs to official accounts that I have visited such as Instagram, Snapchat, Line, or other social media I read that the feedback on Indonesia is really terrible. They said that Indonesians are barbaric and rude. For example, a tourist is trying to enjoy the beauty of Indonesian cultures by simply looking at performances such as wayang and gambang kromong. To enter or to watch performances usually there’s a fee. That’s not the problem. The problem is how pushy and impolite people are. The say we cant queue in lines of tickets and that they were trying to be polite and wait in lines, but that only resulted on waiting until the ticket is sold out. Hearing feedbacks like this is very embarrassing. I wonder to myself, “Where’s our manners? Where’s our Eastern friendly and polite manners that were so well know since decades ago?”  That’s my biggest concern as an Indonesian teenager. We can change that by doing good habits such as smiling to teachers when they pass by, greeting friends, saying thank you and please, etcetera.

Now as an Indonesian teenager I say that I’m proud to be an Indonesian. Why? You must know Joey Alexander right? I think he is the best example I can say to represent the power of youth in Indonesia. He became the first Indonesia musician to chart in billboard, won the grand prix at the 2013 Master Jam Fest, played for Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama. I mean we can’t be more proud of him. He showed everyone that an eleven years old boy can play at the Montreal and Newport Jazz Festival. If you didn’t know about this maybe you know about Stefano Suryanto, a fifth grader student that managed to obtain a gold metal for the best theory in mathemathics. Or maybe Kevin Winata that fought hard to win the gold metal for National Science Olympiad and bring his nation into the International area. Whatever it is that you heard or told or read or anything in that matter, it all proved to us one thing and one thing only, we are stronger that we know, we are more capable than anyone else, we have the same degree to everyone else. This can be proved by an Indonesian swimmer, a Paralympic swimmer to be exact, he is Agus Ngaimin. He suffered from a disease that made him paralyzed waist to down. But that doesn’t stop him from winning 5 gold medals.

Then another thing that we can be proud of Indonesia its natural resources and  its cultures diversities. According to Industrial Ministry official site, Indonesia is the fourth biggest coffee producers after Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia. We all have important natural recourses such as gold in Papua, nickel in South Sulawesi, coal in Kalimatan, etc. For the cultural diversities, Indonesia has batik. Batik has been declared by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humatity in October 2009. That’s why Indonesian Government has declared the second of October as Batik day. Now we can see that many people, not just Indonesian but also European, American, even African are wearing batik. As you know, who doesn’t know Bali, Raja Ampat, and Bunaken. All of them are in Indonesia, guys! People know our awesome Country that we’ve been invited as a the 26 of Europalia guest country in Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, German, England, France, and Poland on 10th of October 2017 until 21st of January 2018.

To conclude my speech, I restate that we must be proud to be an Indonesian. Restore our well known friendly and polite behavior. Come on, there are so many things that we can be proud of in this country! From beautiful islands to various cultures, we cannot say that we’re not proud of this Country. We won countless gold and silver medal. We are still a growing country yet, we are the most well known destination in South East Asia. This is what I really meant by there is no boundaries for humans that can simply dream a little bigger and fight a little longer. Thank you all for the attention, I hope you all have a wonderful day. (Audrey Felicia Lay)