Start 2018 with a Bang – by Florian Bay

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Imagine a moment, it’s June 2018 and your club has had a brilliant year. You are overflowing with new members whose boundless energies led to the creation of countless new friendships and stories to remember for a lifetime! Pathways came and everyone is loving it so far, Toastmasters reimagined has arrived and your efforts in marketing it have paid off tremendously. Another open-house meeting is already on the cards for the summer and eagers members fancy a leadership challenge of a new sorts by launching a new club.

This story will become your story when your club will start 2018 with a bang as loud as sonic boom! There’s a lot you can do to make it happen and most of it is super simple, see below.

 

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Meet a Leader – Beauty Zindi

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This month Nigel, our PR Manager, chatted with Beauty Zindi, our D91 Finance Manager. Beauty has been very busy keeping the DLT in check, introducing a more streamlined finance processes and securing our district budget.

Hi, you have both an unusual forename and surname, where do they come from?

Beauty means exactly what it means in the English language. In Zimbabwe a lot of parents give their children English adjectives as names. Beauty is a common first name in Zimbabwe, but in the UK it gives me celebrity status. I have a middle name – Chiwoneso which means mirror or torch light. As for my surname, according to my late grandfather it is made up of two Zimbabwean ideophones “zi” and “ndi” (pronounced like in candy). “Zi” in this sense is similar to the “zzzzzz” sound made by bees and it means unsettled, roaming about, whereas “ndi” is the opposite. My grandfather told me that his great grand parents had to travel from place to place before they found a place they could call their own. So after they settled, they said to themselves they had been “zzzzz” and they had become settled, therefore “ndi”. They brought the two ideophones together to make the name Zindi. In Zimbabwe there is a place called Zindi where we are considered royalty – okay every African considers themselves royalty!

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D91 Speakers Bureau

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As the District 91 PR Manager, I receive requests for speakers from local interest groups, clubs and institutions for example Oddfellows, London Ashridge Circle, Rotary and WI. Such organisations usually request a list of speakers and their topics. My solution is to create a page on our website with available speakers that I can point them to – a kind of Speakers Bureau.

The intention is to offer our members the opportunity to speak outside of their Toastmasters clubs and gain even more experience of public speaking. However, you will of course be representing Toastmasters. A fine balance is therefore required on quality and eagerness. As a consequence, I have drafted some criteria for those wishing to be listed in the Speakers Bureau.

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Meet a Leader – Ola Aralepo

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Ola Aralepo is a very funny man, a cheeky chappie, so no wonder he recently won the District 91 Humorous Speech Contest. Our D91 PR Manager, Nigel Oseland, caught up with him over a hot chocolate at Royal Festival Hall on a damp cold November morning.

You have an unusual name, where does that come from?

Yes Ola is unusual, by English standards, but it is very international: Nigerian, Sierra Leonian, Norwegian and Polish. In Yoruba it means riches and the full name Olatokunbo is “wealth acquired overseas”. It’s also a bit like “hola” in Spanish meaning hello, but Ola is also Dutch for “Walls” ice cream.  Oh you mean Aralepo, that means “fulgurite” or “thunderbolt”. So my full name implies I am wealth waiting to be discovered (hopefully soon) or simply “ice cream thunderbolt”. I was born in London, raised in Lagos and I’m now back in London.

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