During high school years in Model United Nations, Dahlia Al-Ansari learned to argue on behalf of a country she was assigned to represent. But when Doha Debates invited her to join a town hall debate in Toronto this July, she faced an unfamiliar challenge: sharing her own beliefs about a timely issue.

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Students from Qatar, Canada and Mexico during their visit to the University of Toronto as part of the Doha Debates Town Hall experience in Canada. (Photo: AETOSWire)

An 18-year-old biological sciences student at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Al-Ansari hadn’t traveled to defend a predetermined position. Instead, she discovered that she was there to think critically, express her own viewpoint and remain open to diverse perspectives.

This shift required her to navigate uncharted waters, but “I’m happy that it did,” she says. “It’s showing me the importance of speaking up for myself.”

Al-Ansari was among 20 students from Qatar, Canada and Mexico who spent eye-opening days preparing for the live debate. The town hall, titled “Football fandom: Community or commodity?”, explored the impact of big money on football fandom. The student group joined guests Shireen Ahmed, David Goldblatt and Kely Nascimento for a wide-ranging, thoughtful conversation about whether powerful investors have corrupted football and its fans or given the sport a global upgrade.

The town hall, a collaboration between Doha Debates and Qatar’s Years of Culture initiative, brought young people from this year’s partner countries together to engage openly with different cultures. Since 2012, Years of Culture has focused on building lasting relationships through cultural exchange.

While their preparation covered both debate techniques and football-focused discussions, many students said the most valuable outcome was learning to trust their own voice amid differing views.

For J Lina El Zeini, a Georgetown University international economics student, that realization meant overcoming self-doubt. “I struggled at the start. I was nervous, stumbled over some of my words and felt like I had messed up,” the 20-year-old Palestinian Canadian said. By the time the town hall was over, things had changed “I had not only become more confident in my public speaking, I had also realized that my voice has value, and that meaningful dialogue is something I want to keep being part of,” she said.

The students’ transformations, as it turns out, weren’t by chance, but by design. Their pre-debate journey was intentionally structured to help them manage stress, navigate differing opinions and build confidence.

For Ayaan Khan, a 20-year-old University of Toronto student, transformation was about showing up “not as someone searching for the perfect response, but as someone prepared to engage, contribute, and grow alongside others.”

By the time the students arrived at Toronto’s Terminal Theatre on July 8, they had spent days practicing how to engage across differences and speak from personal conviction. As the cameras rolled and the lights came up, they listened intently, shared their views and shed long-held conversational habits.

When her turn to speak came, Al-Ansari felt that old instinct to reach for something rehearsed but resisted. “I decided to say what I had been thinking about for the last three minutes,” she said.

El Zeini experienced a similar breakthrough. he found her stride: “The overwhelmingly good feedback I got from the audience confirmed what I want to hold onto,” she said. Speak on what you believe is right, and trust that people will meet you there.”

The whole experience translated into pure excitement for Jose Emiliano, a Mexican political science student at Carleton University in Ottawa. After the debate, when asked to rate his readiness to step outside his comfort zone on a scale of one to five, he didn’t hesitate. “A five,” he said.

The full town hall episode is now out on the Doha Debates and Al Jazeera English YouTube channels.

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Doha Debates engages a vanguard of intellectually curious truth-seekers to constructively debate differences in order to build a better future. We emphasize unity over division, encouraging conversations that bring us together rather than drive us apart.