 | | | | Feel free to contact us with any questions, suggestions or feedback. | | | | | | | 15 June 2004 | | | | Report by Beatrice and Thandi
“Oh! What a night” (to borrow the words of our grammarian for the evening, Sudanta Abeyakoon)
With a magical touch that was to run throughout the evening, in her role as Sergeant At Arms for the first time, Francoise Emery introduced the president in style.
The President summarised what toastmasters is about with a powerful quote; “If you want to be successful for one year you grow maize,
If you want to be successful for 10 years you grow trees, But if you want to be successful for a lifetime you grow people”
The President gave a synopsis of Toastmasters reminding us that ‘for the last 84 years, Toastmasters has been growing people.
Speaking in particular about the Croydon club the President said it offers a supportive learning environment, builds self esteem and self belief and gives people the courage to speak. “The fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of your mother in law visiting”
Special credit goes to the toastmaster, Craig Mills “a man used to speaking to computers” for smoothly guided us through the evening. In a relaxed and confident manner and ably supported by his buffer team of Munuwar Malik as timekeeper for the first time and Sudanta Abeyakoon (grammarian) who gave us the word of the day “PRUNE” …to cut away, trim unwanted bits, scale down, he carried the evening through brilliantly.
The main entertainers for the evening continued the magical mood with their speeches;
Jackie Barrie’s No. 2, “Choose your worms carefully” was humorous and educational.
Niki Ajayi’s No. 5, “Life is for the Living” pumped our adrenalin as she took us through the fear/fun experience of life. She closed her speech with an inspiring message, “One can do anything they want. Nothing is impossible”
Richard Lewis “the snake in the grass!!” gave his No. 3, “Discover your Brilliance” which gave us some useful tips on “an all clear for stress” in work. His message was ‘make sure your brilliance is not misplaced, do something you enjoy, something that fits in with your values’
The first session was closed by Peter Gerlach, a Competent Toastmaster (CTM), with his advanced speech, “The Pretzel Demonstration”. It was indeed a perfect demonstration made more apposite by the fact that the pretzels were on the break menu.
Carol West, table topics-master, delighted us with her bag of goodies, a bag full of humour and excitement! What followed was yet another magical performance where members and all the seven guests took the challenge. They crafted speeches around “innocent looking vegetables” and had us all choking with laughter. Congratulations to all of our guests.
The evening would not have been complete without our team of evaluators. A big thank you to Ore Ogungbai, Francoise Emery, Godfrey Nurse, David West, Thandi Haruperi, Dayo Olumo and most especially to David Langworthy our general evaluator for the evening. David, you are a living example of what toastmasters is about. Thank you.
Encouraging us all to grow, the president closed by asking us to have courage and ended by quoting Winston Churchill,
“Courage is the capacity to move from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm”.
| | | | |
