Do you remember receiving invitations to birthday parties when you were younger or a ‘save the date’ card through the post for a wedding or other function? Do you remember how that made you feel? In an age where everything is digital, it’s hard for us to cut through the noise. Perhaps this is even more so, as clubs are operations have moved online. To that end, personalisation may be that much more important.
Reflecting on some invitations this month:
I’d been invited to serve as General Evaluator at a club other than my own – which I’d accepted. A role that continues to be a privilege and an honour to undertake
As a District, we’d been invited to participate in a marketing festival. We accepted this and ran a demo session for their audience – another way to promote Toastmasters to an external audience
We concluded our first virtual Speechcraft in the District – in the final session, it is customary to invite participants to join Toastmasters if they would like to continue their learning journey
There are many reasons to extend an invitation and most would graciously accept. Sadly, I’ve also had to turn down a few invitations to attend contests in the last few weeks. However, on the subject of contests, let’s check in on David and Carmen. Both actually had a go at competing in their club contests because the Contest Chair invited them to do so! David went on to win Table Topics!
This month, I’d like to introduce a returning member. Rob was a member of a community club and served on its committee about 5 years ago. He then went on to serve on the committee at his workplace club for a year or two and then had a break due to other commitments. He’s recently rejoined and getting back into the swing of things.
Whether it be responding to a guest enquiry, asking for someone to help with a project or an event at your club, or asking a guest if they’d like to return or join your club – most of us take the next step when invited to do so. Who will you next extend an invitation to?
It is fantastic to view the Daily Reports (available on the Dashboard) and note we are over the 400 mark. With 17 of our members achieving the Triple Crown Award for completing three or more educational awards. Congratulations to all our members that have achieved an award so far.
Relaunch of the District 91 Trainer Bureau
The new District 91 Trainer Bureau has been created to serve the clubs and members. It provides a full printable/downloadable profile of each trainer so the clubs will know the background and experience of the Toastmaster member they book for events (based on our very own training content and additional roles). The members joining the Trainer Bureau will be recognised and rewarded for their achievements, reflected in a 5-star rating. For our 5-Star trainers, there will be a formal award/trophy to commemorate this achievement at the end of the first year they achieve it.
Toastmasters International has to demonstrate that the things we learn here are relevant to the outside world and the new Trainer Bureau offers us an opportunity to replicate the way professional trainers are engaged and booked. This means providing a full profile and the templates for consultation, contract agreement and feedback.
Whilst some members may already be delivering training professionally outside of Toastmasters and may have undertaken external training in that area, we are unable to assess the quality of that training, so this bureau is specifically for members that are fully experienced in major aspects of the Toastmasters training programme and additional roles, and who are delivering appropriate training to Toastmasters events. This doesn’t mean that other members that do not fit the criteria cannot be trainers. We have a strong network on Facebook, WhatsApp and email that will allow members who are not in the bureau to deliver training.
The Program Quality Team are creating opportunities for members to fulfil some of the criteria, such as Speaker to Trainer courses (three are planned as virtual online sessions in the evenings on 13 & 20 Nov, 05 & 12 Feb & 19 & 26 March) and/or delivering one of the weekly webinars for the District via Andy Hessey.
The Trainer Bureau 5-star system – is cumulative e.g. to be a 3-star trainer – you would also have had to complete the criteria for 1 and 2 stars.
Completed at least CC, or Level 2 Pathways equivalent and served on a club committee for a minimum of 12 months Completed “From Speaker to Trainer” course as trainer or attendee and have completed a High-Performance Leadership (HPL) Project Delivered one club educational, and an Area/Division workshop at Club Officer Training (COT), or District Officer Training (DOT) or Toastmasters Learning Institute (TLI) (Minimum 20 minutes each) Recorded one webinar for the District, and organised and delivered a Youth Leadership Program (YLP) or Speechcraft Course Delivered a workshop or keynote at District conferences or International Convention
We already have 7 people in the new Trainers Bureau and any member can apply from the new District 91 website.
District Webinar Series
The webinar series is going from strength to strength with some great sessions recently on both Toastmaster and non-Toastmaster subjects including How to get paid to speak, a wonderful session on Speechcraft and tips for successfully setting up a new club.
There are still plenty of amazing webinars to come before Christmas and they are all listed on the D91 website. For those members who haven’t seen any of these sessions, they are as relevant to new members as they are to those who are long-standing members of the organisation.
We are currently putting together the programme from January – June 2021 so if you have a webinar you would be interested in seeing or even presenting one yourself, please contact Andy Hessey.
When not supporting her own club which she started in January, the other 20 clubs in Division A or visiting Toastmasters events around the world, Antonia focuses on her business as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Breakthrough Business Coach for Women Entrepreneurs. She stood for Parliament in 2017 and 2019. Learning foreign languages is her lifelong interest as well as being on the water, preferably on a motor cruiser.
Antonia’s Toastmasters journey began in 2009 in a Flemish club in Belgium, Toastmasters Hasselt, where she was a founder member and gave her Icebreaker speech in Dutch. She later became President, a Charter Member of Toastmasters Fonske Leuven and Club Sponsor of Toastmasters Maastrict. On returning to the UK in 2012, she joined Solent Speakers in Fareham where she also became President before Area A1 Director in 2018/19.
See what the clubs in Division A have been doing during September and October
Basingstoke Speakers
Basingstoke Speakers had a joint meeting with Noida toastmasters of District 41, India on 12 September. The meeting was very successful and we hope to have many more joint meetings in the future. Why not watch our meeting recording.
Haritosh Srivastav DTM, VPE, Basingstoke Speakers.
TEDxSouthampton 2021
Russell Streeter ACB ALB, A1 Area Director and member of Solent Speakers in Fareham, will be speaking at TEDx Southampton in May 2021 deferred from 11 November 2020.https://tedxsoton.com/
This all-day event will feature creative, thought-provoking inspiration around our theme of Human to Human Connection in all its forms and includes a focus on Innovation, Connectedness and Personal Potential.
Russell is a finance leader with nearly two decades of experience in insurance and financial services. His outlook on life has been dramatically shaped by his family’s experience of childhood cancer. Russell’s talk is a powerful and emotional story about Human to Human Connection when a family member is seriously ill. He shares the important lessons he has learnt and discusses the vital contributions that everyone can make in such circumstances to save lives.
Salisbury Speakers Discussion Panel Experts
September 18th saw Salisbury Speakers host the 3rd in a series of panel discussions this year. This one was an exciting discussion on the subject of homelessness, with Salisbury MP John Glen, Salisbury Trust for the Homeless Project Leader Louise Davis, and Liz Dore, (Salisbury Speakers Member) of South West Advocacy Network, the new organisation she has just set up in Salisbury.
A series of questions were posed including ‘What lessons can we learn from the pandemic?’ and ‘” what will the end of the eviction ban mean for homelessness?’ A lively discussion followed, concluding with questions from the audience. Salisbury Speakers member Richard Livesey hosted the meeting very professionally, asking panellists to reflect on each others’ contributions and moving smoothly from one question to another.
Previous discussions were: September 7th ‘Perceptions of Influence in the Age of Social Media’, again hosted by Richard Livesey with panellists: previous Salisbury Speakers member Wendy Searle who famously made a record-breaking skiing solo to the South Pole in 2019/20 together with Richard Belle, a local Social Media expert and Barbara Saph, DTM Salisbury Speakers member.
Finally, an in house panel of Rob Dewing, Alexandra Gillies, who works with sustainable tourism in Africa and Liz Dore discussed ‘Do You Think Plastic Should be Banned?’ on August 3rd.
Taking part in a panel discussion is very different to presenting to an audience, especially via a video conference but Salisbury Speakers are expecting to hold more of these during the year and will welcome members from other clubs.
Chaseside Speakers host the World Champion of Public Speaking
Area 42’s only corporate club, Chaseside Speakers, a JPMorgan club, started their year off with a bang with a keynote speech from last year’s World Champion of Public Speaking, Aaron Beverley, a JPM employee from the States.
Distinguished Toastmaster Haritosh Srivastav
interviews Aaron Beverly.
Watch Aaron’s winning speech.
Chaseside is using the online format to its fullest by also joining forces with another D91 JPMorgan club to run joint meetings to boost the number of members at meetings and are looking to possibly extend the meetings to even further afield and branch out to other clubs for Global meetings.
David Matoe Club President is keen to have guest speakers and workshops to add variety and interest to meetings so would love to hear from anyone who has something they can share with the club.
Bristol Central Speakers
At Bristol Central Speakers, we wanted to keep our high-energy and collaborative club culture alive even in the new virtual world. Taking advantage of the fact that any club in the world is now only a click away, BCS hosted a joint meeting with a club in Osaka, Japan. Separated by 8 hours in time, we showed up excited to meet the members of Naniwa Toastmasters.
We quickly learned to add ‘San’ after everyone’s name and joked about not being disqualified for going overtime (Osaka rules!). It was an incredibly rewarding experience that showed us how we’re all so similar even though miles apart.
The feedback from our club members has been fantastic. This idea of a joint club meeting is all thanks to BCS’ Secretary, Polly Thompson, and has inspired us to keep exploring the world via Zoom. Who knows where we’ll (virtually) land next.
Solent Speakers
Solent Speakers (A1) ran an Evaluations event on 29 September starting with an “Enlightening Evaluations” workshop from 2016 D91 Evaluations Champion, Ga Lok Chung, teaching us valuable techniques including the COD and GLOVE methods. We then heard three very different speeches and offered a round-robin evaluation of each
Lucinda Harman DTM “Finding Freeman in Confinement”, a TEDx rehearsal
Beatrice Freeman, L5 Preparing to Speak Professionally “Including the Neurodiverse: My Experience”
Dagmara Elminowska, L1 Evaluation & Feedback 2 “The Problems of Being Tall”
Shilling Speakers in Area A1 hosted a workshop with Luis Dorbecker DTM from Mexico called “In Front of the Camera” to help people with better lighting, framing, backgrounds, camera height etc. It was particularly aimed at anyone taking part in Toastmasters contests. You can see the recording at https://youtu.be/gaSPfwovYPc
Division A Conference & Contests
Saturday 7th November 09:45-14:15
The Division Finals of the Humorous Speech Contest and Table Topics will include eight participants in each as Division A has four Areas. Alongside, there will be keynote speeches from Gavin Meikle DTM on the hidden depths of Pathways and TEDx Speaker and multi-award-winning Deepak ‘DJ’ Justin from D82 with “Unlock the Sherlock: The Art of Cracking a Winner of a Speech”.
This year, it is all online. Time to keep calm and compete!
To assist with your preparations, our District Chief Judge, Neil Coleman delivered a fantastic webinar on the rules and regulations and shared tips to help you all. The webinar is available on the District 91 website for you all to review, along with support documentation. There are complimentary Zoom training sessions which Divisions have created to support you to, do seek these out. Good luck to all.
The District Conference in May 2021 will now be a virtual event, in line with Toastmasters International guidance, that all contests at Area, Division and District level, have to be online in this Toastmasters year. As a District, we have the experience of delivering a fantastic virtual conference, so let’s build on this. To head up the conference team, we require a Conference Director. In performing this role myself in 2018, this served as my HPL project and was one of the most stretching, rewarding and fun roles I had undertaken within Toastmasters. This opportunity would definitely fit someone with great organisational skills, that can build a team to support them, combat challenges and be a Zoomin human. If you are interested in becoming our next Conference Director, or simply looking to volunteer to be part of the May 2021 conference team, contact me
Education and Training
The education achievements are flowing in thick and fast with close to 350 awards so far. Over 140 members have received their Level 1 award, through to 16 members completing their chosen path, 3 members completing the Pathway Mentoring Program and 11 members attaining Distinguished Toastmaster. Congratulations to you all.
The District webinar series is now well underway, with a full programme scheduled for your all on Sunday’s evenings, through to the end of November. There’s a blend of personal development and Toastmasters specific webinar opportunities for you to join. The details are also linked through the District Calendar.
To support the webinar series, the planned relaunch of the Trainers Bureau is now scheduled for the autumn. This will provide those members seeking to step away from purely delivering speeches to develop and enhance their training skills.
A date for your diary!
Save the date for a quiz evening on Friday 4 December from the Program Quality Team
Let’s see how they are getting on. Carmen thoroughly enjoyed her first meeting at Club X. She did a table topic and signed up that day! David did almost slip through the cracks, however as the committee of the club did a full audit of the club tools, his email was found and the VP Public Relations of that club followed up with him and invited him as a guest to their next meeting. Because their VP Membership followed up appropriately with him thereafter, he too has since signed up.
When times are tough or disruption occurs, it helps to be reminded about our ‘WHY’ and core reason for being. Sometimes all it takes it a return to some fundamental, often basic processes to get things back on track again. District 91 now launches the ‘Lead to Achieve’ initiative -mainly focusing on those who are trying to contact us via toastmasters.org but giving us all the opportunity to review and ensure that we are doing the ‘hygiene’ things that make our club successful.
The way we do things may be reviewed and changed and some clubs have adapted very to being able to bring members on board in this new environment. At the time of writing, 6 clubs have achieved the covered Smedley Award.
Our 80/20 challenge for the October 2020 renewal period is on. At the time of writing, 16 clubs have so far retained 20+ members and I’ll be calculating those with 80%+ at the end of the period. We recognise that some of our members may move on at this time for a host of reasons. It’s important for us to understand why and that our doors or virtual platforms remain open to those that want to return when they are ready.
I’d like to conclude this month by remembering our organisational mission:
‘We empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders.’
We’ll explore leadership a little more next month along with seeing how a returner to toastmasters is getting on after a breakaway as well as David and Carmen.
The types of communication channels we have are numerous and ever-changing and every now and again it doesn’t hurt to take stock of what they are. I hope you’ll continue to utilise your Toastmasters journey to flex and refine your communication skills.
Rupa Datta – District 91 Club Growth Director 2020-2021
Completed at least CC, or Level 2 Pathways equivalent and served on a club committee for a minimum of 12 months
