Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club (#8141): #418: Children’s Day: Learn From the Little One

October and November are the months when we celebrate Children’s Day in many countries and the actual date for International Children’s Day falls on 20^th November. We decided to have our theme Children’s Day: Learn From The Little One with the WOD – Ameliorate which means, grow better and improve. We all are here at Toastmasters to progress and improve our communication and leadership skills.

So, our first time ASAA Mike Chin started the meeting and took us through the recital of our Toastmaster’s promises and then proceeded to call the meeting to order, calling upon the Acting President, VPE Manish Jha, IP1, to do the opening address. This was his first time of playing the role of President, ever in his life. He shared his opinion about the theme and called on every member to give a short introduction of themselves and to use the WOD as much as possible adding one more word to their vocabulary. It was one of the perfect moments for everyone to share a personal story through the introduction. Indeed, everyone got chance to speak at least once.

It was then time for TME who basically is the emcee of the show, Competent Communicator Wendy Sim to take control and run the meeting. She gave a brief history of Toastmasters International, when, where, how it started which are useful information for all guests. She shared a brief history, then introduced all the role players including our General Evaluator, Competent Communicator, Elaine Neo to make sure everything is set to bring the meeting forward. She introduced our Table Topics™ master KT Chok, PM2 to conduct Table Topics session. He had prepared topics related to the theme of the day ‘Children’s Day’ and there were five speakers for the session. Well, some were first timers and some with more than a one-time experience.

Speakers were:

Edwin Wong
Tan Ben Hoe
Abdul Rahman
Ryan and
Vijay Kumar

They all attempted very well, and gave their very best. After this wonderful TT session. Our TME brought us to the project speech session. This evening there were 3 speakers lined up to present their speeches.

It was around 8:10 pm, and the 1^st speaker of the evening was announced who was doing his from Competent Communication Manual, Project no. 8, Get comfortable with Visual Aids –With Speech Title ‘Know Thyself’. Let me tell you this two times Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) is a well-known speaker, trainer, and public speaking coach for a long time. He told us how to know ourself better by showing us Russian Dolls which come in a set of one inside another from big to small size. He tried to justify there is inner child inside each of us and if you follow the child, you will do much better in life.

Next speaker who was waiting to do her speech was Cetani Chen, ACB, ALB. She was doing her speech from Path – Effective Coaching, Level 1 Project Researching and Presenting. She came up with her 5-7 mins speech. Speech title ‘I Am Hakka Moi’. By the end of the evening we knew her better as she told us her story. Hakka she explained are people from South East China who migrated during 12th Century. There is different culture, different cuisine for the Hakka. She shared about her story being Hakka Moi and we all improved our general knowledge from her speech. Thanks Cetani!

Then we got to the 3^rd speaker of the day Olivia Chen, PM1. She was doing her speech from Presentation mastery, Level 1 Project Body Language. She came up with her speech title ‘Swimology’. It was great to see how swimology worked in life. Her speech was simple and profound. The Swimology word has come from the original word, swim, of course 😊!

After the prepared project speeches our TME announced a break for 10 mins. Break is the time for fellowship as well as filling our tummies which gave us the feeling of being refreshed.

It was time to resume the meeting, and TME Mike Chin was once again called the meeting to order. The TME called our General Evaluator, Competent Communicator, Elaine Neo on stage to conduct the Evaluation session. This is something that every Toastmasters meeting is famous for. Evaluation is main ingredient in the Toastmasters education program. Elain Neo is from KBTC Toastmasters Club. As per our club practice we usually invite GEs from other clubs so that they can give fair feedback on our improvement and recognise our best. She first gave a brief introduction of evaluation, why is it necessary and asked all the evaluators as per agenda one after another to share their verdict. All of them did I would say good evaluation. They clearly highlighted the strengths of the speaker and spoke on the room for improvement in their speeches. After that she also asked Technical role players the Ah counter, the Grammarian, and the Time Keeper to share their reports. Finally, it was the time of report from General Evaluator herself. She picked good points about us, and areas to improve and recognised the best what we do.

So far, so good. TME returned to the stage to announce the certificates to the best performances of the evening, presented by our Acting club president, Manish Jha, IP1.

Best Table Topics award: Ryn Lim (Guest)
Best assigned speech Evaluation award: Hj. Hashim, DTM