Join EWI supporters, clients, and volunteers on Tuesday, July 13th at La Tasca, Spanish Tapas Restaurant and Bar in Old Town Alexandria for a fun happy hour at 6pm and dinner fundraiser anytime throughout the evening! The restaurant will be donating 10-20% of the evening’s dinner proceeds to our organization. At dinner, please remember to tell your waiter that you are there to support EWI. Hope to see you all there!
** To make a dinner reservation call (703) 299-9810 **
The restaurant is located 607 King Street and you can look at its menu online.
Suggested RSVP to Juliana@ewint.org, but walk-ins are welcome!!
Photos used with permission from La Tasca Restaurant.
The best way to empower women, is by giving them a voice!
My name is Duane Smith. I am a public speaking professor, and speech coach at Los Angeles Valley College. Not only do strong minority women make up the majority of our campus (60% female – 40% male), but I am blessed with not only a brilliant wife, Fleur, but four wonderful daughters, Sierra 6, Skylar 5, Savannah 3, and Scarlet 2! Women’s issues are of great importance to me.
During my undergraduate studies I was awarded a scholarship to Northern Arizona University for public speaking. While competing nationally and internationally for NAU, my two most successful speeches were focused on two of the greatest atrocities being faced by women still to this day. In 1994, while competing at the International Forensics Association (IFA) International Public Speaking Championship Tournament held in Munich Germany, I was awarded first place for persuasive speaking. I spoke about, “The Need to Officially Recognize Rape as a War Crime.” And in 1995, at the Interstate Oratory (U.S. National Championship Tournament for Persuasive Speaking), I placed 7th in the nation for a speech about a little known at the time disease called “HPV: Human Papillomavirus.” The speech was later published by the IFA.
Now as a father of four future women, I am even more vested in women’s issues, which is why your organization caught my attention.
I am a tenured, full time college professor. And I coach one of the most successful college speech teams in the United States. In 2008, my national championship claiming team’s roster mirrored the school’s gender stats with 6 young women, and 4 young men. I am also the CEO and founder of Empowering Speech. Additionally, I have over a decade of experience teaching public speaking to English-as-a-second-language-speakers. My history, services, and testimonies can be viewed at empoweringspeech.com. I am always looking for new challenges and opportunities to serve where there is a need.
Duane Smith
empoweringspeech.com