Take the Smedley Challenge – Grow Your Membership and Your Impact!

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As we welcome two new clubs that joined at the end of the Toastmasters Year, JAL Richmond Leaders and UK Speakers and Leaders Toastmasters, August and September is the time to welcome new members.

The annual Smedley Award is here. It’s your opportunity to boost your club’s energy, expand your membership and earn well deserved recognition.

What is the Smedley Award? The award is named after the founder of Toastmasters International, Dr Ralph C. Smedley. It is a membership building campaign held each year from 1st August to 30th September. Add five new, dual or reinstated members and earn the prestigious Smedley Award ribbon, along with other recognition, for your club.

District 91 has a proud reputation for high performing clubs and membership growth is key to keeping that momentum going. Whether you are a community club or a corporate club, now is the perfect time to welcome new members.

More members add different perspectives, opportunities for learning and mentoring as well as strengthening your leadership pipeline.

Remember why you joined Toastmasters and what you have gained. Share those experiences with future members, they won’t regret it and neither will you. Even though it is holiday time not everyone is away so invite your friends, family and colleagues. Promote your club online via your website and various social media channels and spread the word and always remember to follow up with guests after a visit.

Historically clubs that participate in the Smedley Award often report long term improvements in engagement, retention and member satisfaction. This isn’t just a recruitment push, it’s the start of a stronger, more vibrant Toastmasters year.

Take the Smedley Challenge and let’s make this a record-breaking year for District 91. Invite, grow and thrive.

 

July Update from Your Program Quality Director: Let’s Build a Brilliant Learning Year Together!

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Dear District 91 Members,

July marks a fresh beginning and I couldn’t be more excited to step into this year with you as your Program Quality Director. This year, we’re building on the amazing work done last year with an additional focus on making your Toastmasters experience feel supported and simplified, a year where you’re not overwhelmed, but energised by your journey.

Key Initiatives in the pipeline to Boost Your Learning & Leadership

✅ Trainers Bureau: Need a dynamic speaker or workshop facilitator? We’re launching a Trainers Bureau to connect you with quality trainers across the district.

✅ Mentoring Buddy System : Because growth is better when it’s shared. This new programme pairs club officers and members with a buddy to lean on and learn from.

✅ Online Club Summit : Coming soon! A space for online clubs to collaborate, share wins, troubleshoot challenges and feel connected.

✅ Drop-In Support Sessions: From crafting Club Success Plans to understanding the VPE role and planning successful contests, we’re offering short, focused sessions to help you thrive.

✅ District Podcast: Fresh inspiration in your ears! Featuring member stories, leadership lessons and Toastmasters tips to keep you motivated.

Save the Date: District Contests Are Changing!

We’re bringing back a mid-year connection with the District Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests happening this November 2025. It’s a great opportunity to connect, compete, and celebrate talent early in the year.

To help you run effective contests, we’ll be kicking things off with contest training in August, stay tuned!

The Distinguished Club Program(DCP): Why Your Success Plan Matters

This year, the Club Success Plan is a mandatory requirement for earning any Distinguished Club recognition. Why? Because success doesn’t happen by accident, it starts with intention and planning. This year, you have the opportunity to become a Smedley Distinguished Club too if you achieve all 10 DCP points.

Please make a note of submission deadlines:

  • Club Success Plans: 7 September 2025
  • Area Success Plans: 10 August 2025
  • Division Success Plans: 3 August 2025

Let’s aim for early, thoughtful submissions that set our clubs up for success. Remember it is a dynamic document which you work throughout the year.

Here are the winners of the Beat The Clock Award:

  • City of London Toastmasters Club
  • Berkeley Square Speakers Toastmasters Club
  • London Business School Public Speaking Club
  • London Olympians Speakers Toastmasters Club
  • Tube Talk Toastmasters
  • London Athenian Speakers Toastmasters Club
  • London Corinthians Toastmasters
  • Reading Speakers Club
  • Excalibur Speakers
  • Guildford Speakers Club
  • Kent Speakers Club
  • Voice of Wales Speakers Club
  • Hamwic Speakers
  • 1st London Toastmasters
  • Worthing Speakers
  • London Victorians
  • Data Science Speakers Club
  • Bristol Central Speakers
  • db Toastmasters – Canary Wharf
  • London Toastmasters
  • Legacy Speakers Brixton
  • Toast Titans
  • I&C Toastmasters Club
  • Experience Yoruba

Mark Your Calendar – Our 2026 District Conference

Kindly block 2nd & 3rd May 2026 (first May bank holiday) in your diary for the Annual District Conference, a celebration of learning and collaboration you won’t want to miss. More details to follow soon

To every Toastmaster reading this, we are here to create the conditions for your growth.  Whether you’re chasing a new Pathway goal, rediscovering your confidence or stepping into leadership we’ve got your back. And all this is possible only with the help of my Program Quality Team who I’ll introduce to you soon.

Warm wishes,

Seema Menon
Program Quality Director, 2025–26

District 91 – UK South

Is this Where Leaders are Made?

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Toastmasters International: Where Leaders are Made 

When I tell people that I am a member of Toastmasters the first thought they have is ‘oh, are you one of the red-coated masters of ceremonies who proposes toasts and introduces speakers at formal events?’.  Sometimes I explain that I’m not that Toastmaster even before they’ve asked.  I then elaborate and say that it is an organisation that helps people develop their public speaking skills – and the tagline is ‘Where Leaders are Made.’  This usually gets their attention.  The next question is ‘oh, and how do you do that?’ which is a great opportunity for me to explain what we do at Toastmasters – and that it’s not just building our speaking and communication skills. It’s having the opportunity to develop skills in leadership through taking on club officer roles to start with and then taking on district leadership roles, such as Area and Division Directors.  When I pitch the Toastmasters Youth Leadership Programme to head teachers I emphasise the fact that the students will be organising and running the meetings themselves which helps them develop vital leadership skills, in addition to speaking skills and confidence. Just this term I received a lovely email from a Head of Year teacher at the school where I have delivered the Youth Leadership Programme several times: 

We are currently going through our ‘Senior 6’ process at school, which is an application and interview process for our Year 10 prefects. The process will decide our 6 student leaders and head boy/head girl, and is pretty gruelling! It includes a ‘fish-bowl’ activity, speeches, tasks and an interview with the Principal.  

So far we have cut applicants from 31 to 14 following the fish-bowl exercise. One thing almost all of the successful students so far have in common is that they participated in the 10-week [YLP] course you ran for us last year! This is amazing and really shows the impact this has had on our young people.  

Needless to say, they have booked us to run a YLP with the new Year 9 group in the Autumn term.  I’m really looking forward to that – it is so rewarding to watch a group of 20 15 year-olds grow in confidence and communication skills over that time.  And we have a lot of fun – after all, Ralph Smedley said “we learn best in moments of enjoyment”.   I never have a problem getting one of them to chair the meeting – as soon as I say they will have the gavel to call the meeting to order, they all want to volunteer – and enjoy the power it gives them!  As for managing the timing – what fun to take charge of the timing lights to warn their friends that they are running out of time.  As for the Topics Master – yes, sometimes the questions they ask can be a bit vindictive on their friends – but they know it will be played back to them when the roles are reversed.  All the while they are learning valuable leadership and speaking skills. Oh, and what do we do about the awkward gait and shuffle when approaching the front of the room – we practise good posture by pretending we are models on the catwalk – one of them plays some lively catwalk music on their phone and we all take it in turns to stand tall, sashay up to the front of the classroom – and turn gracefully to face the audience – just as if we were at Paris fashion week.  It works – as has been evidenced by the success of some of the students getting those leadership roles for the coming year.   

The Youth Leadership Programme is an excellent project to run in any school or youth community group to teach valuable public speaking, leadership and communication skills. Running such a programme can also count towards the requirements for gaining your DTM award.   

If you would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact me. alkema@janetalkema.com

Reflections on our First Corporate Summit

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Years in the making, months ideating, and a few weeks of intense mobilisation…and just like that, it’s over! Or is it?

On Thursday 19th June, we held our inaugural corporate summit in District 91. What’s a summit? Our emcee for the morning explained this beautifully:

“Well, the difference between a summit and a meeting is that Summits are by invitation only and have a specific topic.  You gather the most influential people and the specialists on a particular topic you want to address and they share/collaborate on how to move forward. So, in essence, every summit is a meeting, but not every meeting is a summit!!”

The event was hosted at Dartmouth House in Mayfair, London – a half day event to include networking and some lunch. I was first introduced to this venue and the associated organisation by two Toastmasters some four years ago! That in itself shows the power of our network and that it takes time to build partnerships.

I have to say that I am overwhelmed at the support I got for this project when I announced that we had the greenlight – from the immediate summit squad to the general cheerleading from those who simply wanted to come along and support in anyway they could on the day. Let me start by thanking that squad – three wonderful ladies who said ‘I’m in’. They put up with me most Sunday mornings for 25 mins in the preceding weeks, and frankly, got the job done. They were Guler Cortis, Deborah Stevens, and Janet Alkema, DTM. Give a job to a genuinely busy person – they get to the point and it gets done!

We ran a taster meeting within the event – a bit like a traditional demonstration meeting or Open House format for those of you that are familiar. Careful attention was needed to make it relevant to the workplace and not get too distracted with regular jargon we may use in everyday club meetings.

We also ran a panel discussion called ‘Beyond the Boardroom: The transformative power of Corporate Toastmasters’ – all four members had differentFour person panel for the corporate summit event.

experiences of being involved with Toastmasters in a company setting and it was impossible not to learn something from this discussion!

The purpose of the event was to help us develop and maintain corporate partnerships. Most events that you’ll see advertised are internal facing or are likely to attract existing members and potential individual new members. The corporate summit is more a step towards us providing more relevant events for corporate clubs and those within the organisations that make the decision to have Toastmasters rolled out there.

The nature of the event meant that I needed to secure support and sponsorship from the District Trio to pull it off so thanks to Steve, Debbie and Seema for backing this.

A delightful day was had by all and in true Toastmasters style, I’m now in the lessons learned phase and capturing 360 evaluations. I do hope there will be another one next year and a blue print is being produced for what to do. The potential for corporate partnerships in our District is huge and that means there’s more work to do here that doesn’t happen with a one-off event.

I’m fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to bring together skills I’ve developed towards something I’m passionate about, where I recognise the gap and that I’ve no doubt Toastmasters as an organisation wants for us to do more of. With that I go back to our Founder Ralph Smedley’s vision – to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to improve themselves, we need to continue to look outside.

My final named thanks has to go to our District PR Manager, Allen Paul, DTM – between the postcards that were sent out as invitations to target companies and our crazy video making antics – it’s true, ‘we learn best in moments of enjoyment.’

Rupa Datta
Past District 91 Director
Corporate Summit Chair

 

From Growth to Gratitude: A Heartfelt Thank You

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End-of-Year Reflections from Your Club Growth Director 

My dear Toastmasters,

As the Toastmasters year draws to a close, I find myself filled with deep gratitude for each one of you – our members, club officers, area and division directors, the club growth team, the district leadership team, my mentors, and the many Toastmaster well-wishers who had my back, especially in moments when I doubted myself.

This year has been a tremendous learning experience. While I began the year with ambitious goals, I quickly realised the value of going back to basics, understanding why our members are proud of their clubs and how we can truly support them to grow. Sometimes, that also meant having the courage to let go of clubs that no longer served their members. As they say, growth isn’t always linear, but it is always meaningful.

We tried many new campaigns and ideas:
📍 Job Fairs to raise awareness
🚇 The Ditch the Nerves Tube campaign
🎤 Ditch the Nerves Live interview skills workshops
🏢 Our first-ever Corporate Summit, setting the tone for years to come
🎁 Innovative incentives to reward and encourage

Some landed beautifully. Some taught us valuable lessons. But through it all, we moved forward anchored in the Toastmasters core values : Integrity, in our decision-making; Respect, for every member’s journey; Service, in supporting one another; and Excellence, in everything we aimed to deliver.

To all of you who contributed your time, energy, ideas and heart: thank you.

As I transition into the Program Quality Director role, I hope we’re leaving the district stronger, wiser, and more connected – ready for the next wave of growth under the incoming Club Growth Director.

Wishing you all the very best as you finish the year strong, take pride in the incredible clubs you’ve built and continue empowering more voices.

And if you haven’t yet filled in the feedback survey, please do so – your voice matters:
🔗 https://forms.gle/xCbPMhEQ29w5SgZp8

With heartfelt thanks and deep respect,

Seema Menon
Club Growth Director, District 91
2024–2025