Let's Talk Program by HSBC for Connecting Dreams Foundation Transformation Fellows

People coming from the Trans community often lack language proficiency in English due to various reasons like lack of exposure, dropping off early from school, or poor quality of education. Poor language comprehension creates a language barrier in their Career Progression, and they often miss out on many opportunities.

Employee volunteering programs (EVP) can be defined as workplace-based initiatives where employers provide some form of support or encouragement to enable employees to volunteer in the community.

HSBC partnered with Connecting Dreams Foundation to help Transformation Fellows realise their potential and realise corporate vision of creating social impact.

The program worked on enhancing the English communication skills of the individuals from trans-community through one-on-one mentoring by HSBC employees who volunteered their time and underwent a structured training and sensitization session before kick starting the program.

The program was conceived and led by HSBC’s Krishnaveni Balasubramanian, Vice President – Employee Volunteering & Charitable, Giving Global Service Centres, Global Operations, India.

The program ran for 7 weeks and officially concluded, on 26th May after the completion of seven weeks of the session.

Pedagogy:

The session revolved around various techniques to enhance the speaking skills like body language, pauses, delivery, pace, sentence structure, length of the speech, and building overall confidence. The mentees worked one-on-one with their specific mentor, where they had to prepare speeches every week on the topic chosen by them and approved by their mentor. The mentees then prepared and delivered speeches with the support of their mentors on the presentation day which, were then evaluated. The topic varied from personal introduction to the story from personal life and talking about the current events. Some of the topics that mentees worked on were Women Empowerment, Technology during Covid-19, Social Media, and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

Outcome

The learning for the Transformation Fellows has been tremendous, and the fellows now are much more confident with a visible improvement in their speech formation and deliverance. The HSBC Let’s talk program helped in polishing the overall confidence of the Transformation Fellows and learning the intricacies and techniques of language delivery.