“It’s the deep breath before the plunge,” Gandalf said. Which could be an apt image for our first Kick Off event, right at the beginning of the year and before all others!

We were honoured with the presence of His Majesty’s Ambassador, Louise de Sousa, who regaled us with a wonderful speech about the use of language as the basis of diplomacy and a reference to how ESU had impacted her own personal life. 

The Kick Off event is a joyous celebration of the talents, enthusiasm, and courage of young people—some of them as young as 1st grade!—who participated and won our competitions in 2023. Our congratulations once again to them all and their teachers and parents who’ve supported them all along the way.

It was also a great opportunity to share with our member schools and people in the audience what we call our ESU Journey. ESU Chile can be proud of being one of the few—if not the only—ESU chapters around the world that organizes events for all ages, accompanying students in the five different stages of language acquisition: from the earliest approximations to sound and all the way to the formulation and exchange of complex ideas with another person.

That so many kids in our country can demonstrate excellence year after year in these different areas is something that should make everybody proud. And certainly, the audience on the day demonstrated it!

At ESU Chile we’re looking forward to what will be another brilliant year of students shining through the English language!

Thank you very much to everybody at Villa María Academy for hosting us so wonderfully: Principal Loreto Jullian, Head of English Lisa Miller, Jacinda Forster, Cecilia Torres, and everybody else helping us on the day!