人物介绍：
12-13年度AYP项目交流学生 秦筱鲲
左图为秦筱鲲（左一）与其他获奖者合影
2012-2013年度AYP（Academic Year Program）项目交流学生秦筱鲲在美国北卡莱罗那州夏洛特的Evelyn Mack Academy学校交流学习，他参加了该校的演讲俱乐部。Optimist International（赛事组织者）在夏洛特地区举办了演讲比赛，秦筱鲲同学在学校举行的第一轮比赛中获得一等奖, 并作为该校的唯一一名代表被推荐到地区参加比赛。经过精心准备，他在有7所学校的7名选手参加的第二轮比赛中获得二等奖。他的演讲稿如下：
Why my voice is important
My voice is important，for me, for the others, and for the community. From the constitution that we can see，
Congress shall make no law prohibiting the freedom of speech; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.
We have the freedom to speak. We are living in a same community that is made up of individuals. What matters to us, matters to the community. When negative issues try to affect our community, we as the community can join as one voice to make changes.
For example, government planned to allot financial aid to build stadiums in the future. It is a wonderful plan to have more space for sports. But when we think of the overall picture, sport is leisure activity compared to the issue of homeless. Many children suffer the result of being homeless, wondering in the street where they sleep in the dark and cold ground in the night, having nowhere to hide when it’s rainy, having nothing to eat when they are hungry. If we can build some more shelters for those kids, provide them with a warm bed, a good dinner, a steady studying desk, then they won’t go to school with empty stomach, tired body and unfinished homework. Only my voice is not enough, but still it’s important, for I can persuade more and more people to realize the problems in our community. Together, we can make our community move forward.
The importance of voice can also be seen from the history. For example, there were once thousands of empires in the past hundreds years. And among these dynasties, only king’s and few aristocracy’s voice were considered important for the country, no common people’s voice and suggestions were taken into consideration. Most of the empires were toppled by the rebellion from the low class who were suffering the life, for their voice were not heard by the king, their problems were not known by dominators, their demands were not satisfied as the time passed. High tax, great famine, poor living condition these problems could not be solved by peaceful negotiation, but only by violent rebellion. Now, problem has been solved by creating a better institution----democracy, under which everyone’s voice can be heard and considered important.
Voice is a vote that empowers everyone to decide who will be elected as our next president, what life we want to lead next few years, and in what society we want to live.