Speakers Bureau has recruited and trained additional students this fall. Many thanks to Peter Briggs, who presented an effective cultural orientation and training on September 23 to a total of fourteen students. Thanks also to Norseha Unin, who took pictures, set up a marvelous photo slide show and shared her speaking experiences; to Cheryl Highstreet who brought refreshments; and to Marilyn Schlief, who joined Norseha and Cheryl in creating teams of student speakers.

A new system for coordinating cultural visits to schools will be tested this year. At the orientation, the students were grouped into teams based on their days of availability for speaking and then assigned to a coordinator for their main contact. The coordinators are Marilyn Schlief, for Wednesday students, Norseha Unin for Friday students and Cheryl Highstreet for students who can speak any of the other days. The coordinators are now matching students with requests from Howell and Waverly schools.

Permanent SB nametags with photos are being created for our coordinators and student speakers. The purpose is to facilitate relationships between SB coordinators and student recruits, raise SB program visibility, and provide recognition to student recruits. In addition, a special mark will be placed on the student speaker nametags for each training session that the students have attended, allowing SB coordinators to identify and greet their trained speaker team members and encourage others to attend the next upcoming training.

To increase the number of recruits who attend trainings, SB will also provide more frequent trainings (average every other month) that last only an hour, so that the students can also attend the last half of OISS coffee hours on Fridays. Norseha and Cheryl are taking digital student photos as the students sign up for SB at the coffee hours and at the trainings. The coordinator and student photos will be posted with a short description in an SB web page on the CVIP website. Some advantages are: students can identify SB coordinators; schools requesting a visit can see which students and countries are available; drivers can see ahead of time for whom they will be providing a ride; and students will have an additional sense of identity and recognition with SB. William Eubank has volunteered to help with website modifications.

Some speakers are already scheduled for November and December: a French student at Waverly East Intermediate; a Nigerian student at LCC; a Japanese student at Waverly East Intermediate; a Peruvian student at Waverly East Intermediate; and Turkish, Japanese and Nigerian students at Howell Elementary.

Please e-mail Margaret Beall at marbeall@aol.com or Cheryl Highstreet at sbcvip @yahoo.com with names of foreign students who would like to be guest speakers and schools that would like to have speakers.