Our Story

Cofounders Nicholas Bogdan and Shakhram Rakhmatullaev, believe that debating is a life-transforming activity. It teaches students communication, preparation, and teamwork skills. As students who are immensely fortunate to be in a school with a strong debating support system, Nick and Shak feel that the experience of debating has profoundly changed their lives.

Their passion and gratitude for debating motivated them to help other children across Australia experience what debating has to offer. They felt like many students across the country weren’t able to get the same high-level experience they did, so, they wanted to make a difference!

In May of 2023, they founded Debating4all, a non-profit organisation that aims to provide high-level debating coaching for all schools. They quickly got interest from selfless high-level coaches from the Victorian State Team, as well as great support staff, enabling them to coach students that year successfully.

Coming into 2024, we at Debating4all are now looking to provide coaching to even more students and schools, with an increase of interest and greater flexibility from our coaches, many of whom are now studying at university. Each of us here at debating4all seeks to help students improve their debating and lifelong skills that come about through participation in the activity.

Our Misson

Our mission at debating4all is simple. We want to give everyone an equal opportunity to enjoy the joy of debating.

We recognise that debating coaching is expensive, so we seek to provide free coaching on par with that of private schools. We will do this by consistently coaching 2-hour sessions before debates, and potentially watch debates to give feedback, at public and rurally located schools.

We will also look to partner with schools to run day-long workshops to which everyone is invited.

Our Mission is to help as many people as possible, so we are also going to provide online resources, ranging from our own recorded workshops, matter files, and a collation of debating videos which our coaches at Debating4all recommend.

In the future, we look to expand our outreach across Australia in order to maximise our potential impact!

 FAQs

  • By contacting the debating4all team via our email, phone number, website or social media you can quickly get in touch with one of our volunteers. From there we can get in touch with your debating coordinator and organise a flexible time for coaching from one of our highly experienced coaches.

  • Debating4all utilises volunteers that can proficiently coach students. High quality senior high school debaters, drawn from the Victorian state debating team, coach younger years, whilst university debaters provide coaching to all years, including the senior years as well.

    Coaching is be done on a first-come first-serve basis, solely towards public and rurally located schools who are unable to afford the high costs of debate coaching. Coaching durations last 1-2 hours and can be done in-person or online. We may also watch debaters debates.

    The coaching itself consists of helping the debate teams prepare their cases or teaching secret topic preparation, as well as going through general debating principles and tips.

  • Volunteering as a coach at Debating4All will allow you to support students directly in their own debating, which can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It can be put on your resumes, and the skills you will obtain from volunteering, including organisation, management and communication, will be undoubtedly beneficial for many facets of your lives.

  • Volunteer coaching is flexible and easy. We will simply request volunteers for upcoming debates, and volunteers can either accept, or they can decline for whatever reason.

    However, we do encourage volunteers to try to develop a close relationship with teams by providing regular coaching (for each upcoming debate) through the debating season.

    The time commitment is minimal; across a standard DAV season, total coaching hours will vary between 5-10 hours. Coaching can be done in-person or online, to adapt to the needs of the team and the coach.