Pathways

Pathways to Success: Updates, Contests, and Rewards in District 91

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Hello Fellow Toastmasters, 

It’s been a busy and productive month filled with club officer training, preparations for the contest season, and much more. As we look ahead, I’d like to focus on key updates to help you prepare for what’s coming next. 

Pathways Update 

The below message from Toastmasters International highlights an important transition ahead that I want to bring to your attention: 

Base Camp Outage (October 9th-25th, 2024):
To facilitate the transition to a new system, Base Camp will be inaccessible from October 9 until October 25, 2024, for critical platform testing. If you’re currently working on a project or plan to during this period, please download any necessary materials or wrap up outstanding tasks beforehand. Below are key items that will not transfer to the new system, so make sure to act if these apply to you: 

  • Feedback on Base Camp: If you have feedback you’d like to keep, whether it’s constructive criticism or words of encouragement, take a screenshot or save the text elsewhere. 
  • Documents in My Documents: Download any uploaded files you wish to retain. Once the new Base Camp is live, you can upload them again. 
  • Assess Your Skills Activity: This feature will be redesigned in the new system. If you’d like to retain your responses, take a screenshot or save them separately. 
  • Understanding Your Leadership/Communication Style Projects: The answers to these questionnaires won’t be transferred. Be sure to capture your results if you’d like to keep them. 
  • Story Collection Tool (Engaging Humour Path): Save any information recorded here by copying and pasting it to another document before the transition. 
  • Meeting Roles: Save a record of any meeting roles you’ve logged in Base Camp. 
  • Completion Certificates: Certificates won’t transfer, so download copies of any you’ve earned. 

Additionally, to ensure your educational progress is fully up to date, please ask your club officers to approve and submit any pending Level completions via Club Central before October 9. T 

The new system promises to be more user-friendly and will feature training videos to help you navigate the changes. 

 

 Contests 

For those of you who missed the recent webinar on contests with our District Chief Judge, Arnaud Sartre, you can catch up by watching the recording here:

In the meantime, here are some general FAQs that may help clarify any queries you may have: 

  • All contests at Area, Division and District Level will be held in person only. 
  • A Note on Eligibility: A contestant competing in, for example, the Table Topics contest is not eligible to hold a contest official role (e.g. judge) within the same contest type in which they will be competing. They would not be able to compete if they were a judge for the same contest type in a different area. It would be fine if they were competing in Table Topics and a judge for the International Contest. However, if a contestant were the judge for the same contest type that they would be competing in, they would be disqualified from competing as they no longer meet the eligibility requirements listed on page 7 of the Speech Contest rulebook. 
  • Remember, in Toastmasters, every contest is guided by our core values of integrity, respect, service, and excellence. 

 

Click here to see all the upcoming webinars we have for the year. Register for our webinars for October. They run weekly on Sundays at 5pm – 6pm. 

6th Oct: What is Speechcraft – https://tinyurl.com/D91-what-is-speech-craft 

13th October: How to use Concur – https://tinyurl.com/D91-HTUConcur 

20th October: Conflict resolution – https://tinyurl.com/D91-conflict-resolution 

27th October: Growing membership – https://tinyurl.com/D91-Growing-membership 

  

Incentives and Congratulations

Brighton & Hove Speakers Club 

Cardiff Toastmasters 

Excalibur Speakers 

Hallmark Speakers 

Harrovian Speakers Toastmasters 

Infineum Milton Hill Speakers 

Kent Speakers Club 

Legacy Speakers Brixton 

Lewisham Speakers Club 

London Cardinals 

London Olympians Speakers  

LSBU Public Speakers Club 

 

 PMI UK Toastmasters Club 

Polish Your Polish 

Riverside Communicators 

Salisbury Speakers 

Shilling Speakers 

Surbiton Speakers 

Sustainable Speakers Online 

The Speakers of Croydon Club 

Wembley Stadium Speakers 

Winchmore Hill Speakers 

Wye Knot Speakers 

 

For clubs who would like additional general training, please connect with your Area Director to arrange further sessions.  In the meantime, here is a link to Club Officer Tools—which has further information on roles, tutorials, resources, and more for club officers.  

Link: https://www.toastmasters.org/leadership-central/club-officer-tools  

 

Save the Date – District 91 Conference 2nd-4th  May 2025 

Mark your calendars! The winner of each Division contest will compete in the District Contest at the District 91 Conference in May 2025. This exciting event will take place in London, with the venue to be confirmed soon. If you’re interested in supporting the conference, perhaps as part of a High-Performance Leadership project, please get in touch. There will be plenty of roles available for those who want to get involved and make the event a success.  In the meantime, check out this video of me looking at venues – the fun has started! 

Thank you for your ongoing dedication and enthusiasm. Let’s continue working together to make this a remarkable year for District 91. 

 

Warm regards,
 

Debbie Williams 

Program Quality Director, 2024-2025 

District 91 

 

Spring has sprung

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Spring has sprung – another chance for us to reflect As I write this, we go into a period of hope, yet some more uncertainty. At this time of year we’re all given the opportunity to renew our Toastmasters membership for another 6 months. As we do so, think about what you’ve learned or contributed … Read more

My three important P’s

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My three P’s   Pathways From the fledging uptake of Pathways in 2018 to today, where our members have collectively achieved over 3000 educational awards; Let’s celebrate the success of all our members who have achieved their educational goals! This month we celebrate three years of our education system from the rollout, wow how time … Read more

It’s a great time to finalise

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Dear members,

In just two weeks, the Toastmasters year will be over; now is a great time to finalise and deliver that last speech to get this elusive educational award or get that coveted Triple Crown (3+ educational award in a year).

Reach out to your VP Education to confirm all your awards have been registered on Club Central this side of the Toastmasters year.

Did you know that at the time of writing this note, 149 of you have already achieved a Triple Crown? Join this exclusive group and receive a pin recognising this achievement.

Despite the last 3 months of challenges, opportunities and new practices, we have over 100 Clubs that have already achieved the Distinguished status, with over 20 Clubs on track to become Distinguished simply by renewing 1/2 members, or register 1 Educational Award!

Together we have managed to keep meeting, deliver speeches and closeout on projects, you have made a significant impact on your personal growth but also that of fellow members.

Over the coming weeks, I will be attending both my Club meetings and help celebrate the achievements of our members on their anniversaries. I encourage you all to look at ways to recognise the achievements of the year, a special meeting, an award ceremony or simply an extended recognition segment at the next Club meeting.

Let’s keep focus on achieving and recognising our achievements!

Looking forward to hearing your success stories!

Arnaud

Reflections on Pathways

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By Bob Bowes DTM, Club President, Canary Wharf Communicators and Area K31 Director

Change is not easy. It’s frequently met with resistance and uncertainty. Nevertheless, change is inevitable.

Having completed 2 DTM’s and 14 of the 15 Advanced manuals in the traditional programme, you could ask me ‘anything’ about the old system. As incoming club president at Canary Wharf, the executive and I set an ambitious education target as part of the Club Success Plan. Subsequently, I attended a Pathways presentation (it wasn’t as enlightening as I’d hoped!) and off we went.

I completed my ‘Choose A Path’ questionnaire and enrolled in the Dynamic Leadership path but I soon discovered that learning the Pathways program is very much like driving a new car. Just as many drivers never explore all the feature on their display dashboard, many Toastmasters never visit the Toastmasters website or establish an online profile. In my club visits, I now stress how important it is to log into the website before starting Pathways, read the FAQ’s and carefully navigate the program.

Whilst working my way through Level 1 (Mastering the fundamentals), I had to make several phone-calls to Pathways experts to help guide me from one step to the next. How, for example, do you move from one project to the next within a path? Where is the printed evaluation sheet? When completed, where is it stored? What does the circle with the percentages mean?

Bob Bowes

By the time you progress to Level 2 (Learning your style), Pathways starts to get more interesting and different from the old programme. Prior to each project you receive guided information about your next project speech via short videos, learning notes and quick ‘tests’. The value in the Pathways learning program begins to emerge. At the completion of level 2, you are presented with an optional concurrentpath, the ‘Pathways Mentor Program’. I encourage all my club members to adopt this path too, as it now forms the competence and ‘backbone’ behind the club’s mentorship programme.

By Christmas, I noted that some club members were on speech 6 or 7 but had not submitted a level for completion! This didn’t make sense to me, as the level 1 requires just 4 speeches. It quickly became apparent that this was a consequence of members selecting a path and then never going to the ‘dashboard’ again or navigating the path as they needed to. By this point, because I was working through the programme myself, I could coach others through the process and clear the ‘log jam’.

This month I completed my Level 5 (Demonstrating Expertise), where one of my projects was a 360 evaluation with my club executive, and subsequently completed my whole Dynamic Leadership path. I’m now a strong advocate for Pathways. It may not be as simple to follow as the traditional programme, but it is a much more focussed, valuable and appropriate programme in today’s world. Participate in it, talk it up and your new members will quickly embrace it.

To date, 10 members of Canary Wharf have completed at least one level (16 levels completed in all), with another 17 members within one of two speeches of completing their level 1 as well.

Change is inevitable, but as a club officer, leading by example coupled with knowledge and enthusiasm makes all the difference. Pathways is here and it’s our new members future!

 I have of course signed up to my next path already.  ‘Engaging Humor’.