Kiriana's speech makes national heats

SUCCESS: Solway College student Kiriana Welsh-Phillips (front second from right) won her way through the finals of the Wellington regional Race Unity Speech Awards to the national semifinals in Auckland next month. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Solway College student Kiriana Welsh-Phillips has captured a national semifinalist berth in the Race Unity Speech Awards.

Teacher Sue Franck said the Year 13 student had competed as a Wellington regional finalist in the capital last Thursday and won her way though to the national semifinals in Auckland next month with a genuine, hard-hitting and moving speech that was delivered "a little like a spoken poem".

"Kiriana's speech is incredibly powerful and moving and it is about racial stereotypes and labels. It is a big honour to get through to the next stage," Ms Francks said, especially given it was the first time a student from the school had entered the contest.

According to the Race Unity Awards website, the speech contest was sparked in the wake of several "nasty, racially-motivated incidents aimed at non-Europeans" hit the headlines across New Zealand including an attack on a Somali man in Christchurch; the verbal assault of a Maori woman in Wellington; and the emergence of a Neo-Nazi group in Auckland.

An Auckland-based Iranian Hedi Moani was deeply concerned at the stories and in 1997 organised alongside the Race Relations Office the inaugural Unity in Diversity Rally in Auckland on December 10 - United Nations Human Rights Day.

He also established the first Race Unity Day in 1999, with the Race Relations Office choosing March 21, which was also the United Nations-recognised International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Mr Moani was murdered in October 1999 and the Race Unity Speech Awards were founded to honour his race relations work in New Zealand, with the competition embracing race relations, oratory, and youth.

Race Unity Day was re-named Race Relations Day in 2002 and had since become an annual event.

The semifinals of the speech contest are in Ponsonby on May 15 and the final will be decided the next day at Te Mahurehure Marae in Point Chevalier the next day.