Area L 61 Leaders’ Newsletter September 2016 Director’s message We have had a wonderful 2 months since the new Toastmaster year started. As a group of 4 clubs, we have worked together to set our goals and are working cohesively to achieve these over the course of the year. The main mantra is collaboration and sharing strengths with each other to grow as a strong area within the Division L. We did two COTs this August and had some good attendance. I hope all the club officers are comfortable in fulfilling their roles. If there are any queries, please feel free to contact. There was a radio interview at Radio Harrow organised by Harrovians to promote the club and create a buzz in an attempt to spread the word in the community. There are loads of exciting events being organised this month by the 4 clubs. Please spread the word so that we can extract maximum benefit of the efforts put in by a club. Let’s support each other and help to achieve the club and area goals. As always, please feel free to nudge me if I could be of help to you. Have a wonderful month and wish you all the best with the Humorous Speech contests. Look forward to see the winners at the Area contest on 1 st October. Keep speaking from the heart! Seema Menon Area Director L61
Growing Membership
TM Ribbons HOD TM Speakers Club was the proud recipient in July of an unusual TM ribbon for achieving five new paid up members within one month. Unremarked in this is that HOD averaged four new members per month for the first six months of 2016. As a result the club is enjoying high quality meetings, attended by 25 to 30 people, all keen to improve their public speaking abilities. There are often up to half a dozen guests as well. These meetings are light hearted, inclusive and highly educational. Everyone goes home with something new. This success is the result of clever planning and hard work by a highly committed management team, who enjoy each other as much as they enjoy Toastmasters. New Membership Campaign TJXpressions have already launched its new membership Campaign. “We’ve split our membership campaign as Membership Campaign for IT and a PR Campaign for the rest of the Business. One of our goals is to expand TJXpressions outside of IT, which is slow going but we are hoping to generate some interest that
will help us push forward with it. We will still need to keep recruiting from IT in the meantime, so we are organising a session with our Autumn Graduate Intake this month. To reach out further we will hold a presentation workshop (in what’s called a Lunch & Learn) for the whole Department and use this as a way to promote Toastmasters as a safe and fun environment to practice further� explains Zach.
Table Topics Workshop with Paul Carroll
Watford Speakers organised a great Table topics workshop on 19th July headed by Paul Carroll. It lasted the entire meeting and allowed all members the opportunity to tackle a Table Topic and then receive excellent constructive feedback from Paul. The workshop was interactive and inclusive to all at the meeting and included tips on how to prepare for Table Topics for example by following current events, going with the first thing that comes to you and taking your time going up to the stage. Also developing strategies for answering questions PREP (Point, Reason, Example, and Point). Ways to take the fear out of Table Topics and also how to work Table Topics training into everyday conversation, meetings at work etc. Watford Speakers member Jitu Sharma lead the extended Table Topics session and after each Table Topic, Paul gave feedback on the structure of the answers. All the Table Topics were taken from previous Competition Table Topics meaning they were rather challenging. Well done to everyone who took part!
The Area 61 Club Officer Training We had a couple of successful Club Officer Training Sessions in our area. COT1 was held at TJxpressions, which was conducted by Carolie, Piotr Janik and Seema Menon. COT2 was held on the 22nd of August. A big thank you to Piotr Janik of Watford Speakers for capitalizing on his great organisational, management and networking skills to make this
event truly remarkable. Planning a date that enabled a large number of officers to be trained on the day maximised the value of the COT. Great COT training sessions from Jayanthiny Kangatharan, Steve Brewer and Seema Menon as well.
Speech Craft Training Yogesh Dattani of Watford Speakers has organised a Speech Craft Training to be run over 8 weeks commencing from 29th September at Watford Speakers at The Church Hall of The First Church of Christ Scientist, 53, Cassiobury Drive, Watford, Hertfordshire ,WD17 3AD. Speech Craft has been brilliantly planned and managed by Yogesh. His excellent networking skills have ensured Speech Craft is very well advertised within Toastmasters and the wider community. Yogesh is quite new to Toastmasters but his energy and dedication have had a big impact on the club. It has been ably supported by Joseph Simmon with his strong technical skills to develop the Speech Craft Web site and the online sign up tools. Please see the following links for more details. http://www.watfordspeakers.org/speechcraft https://moocowsmoo.wufoo.eu/forms/speechcraft-signup/ Truly worth attending these sessions.
Forthcoming Competitions
All Division L Toast Master clubs are busily planning their Humorous speech and Table Topic Competitions. HOD was the first club in our area to hold its competitions. They successfully held its’ Humorous Speech and Table Topics competitions on the last 15th and Steffy Samuel (1st place), Gill Ornstein (2nd place) and David Phelops (3rd place) being winners in the Humorous Speech Competition and Steffy Samuel (1st place), David Phelops (2nd place) and Anthony Winyard (3rd place) winning the Table Topics Competition. Congratulations to winners!
Watford Speakers and Harrovian Speakers are looking forward to having their competitions on the 20th and 21st of September consecutively. TJXpressions will also have its Table Topics competition on the 21st September. Winners will compete in the Area Competition scheduled for 1st October form 1.00pm -5.00 pm at Christ Scientist, 53, Cassington Drive, Watford, WE17 3AD organised by Indra. Take part and showcase your talents. This is a great opportunity to boost your confidence too. Come! Sign up for the roles of counters, judges, timers and SAA. Happy competition to all!
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