Canning Vale Toastmasters

Transcription

1 Canning Vale Toastmasters In th is issue Meet our new members Editorial 1 1st meeting of V o l u m e 3, I s s u e 3 J a n u a r y & F e b r u a r y Meet Our New Members Since the start of the year, we have had 3 new members join our club! Remember to introduce yourself to them and make them welcome when you see them. Chinese New Year Meeting 2-3 Member Achievements 3 Leadership 4 Satish Gummadavelli Rahman Khandker Chris Hunt Going Beyond Our Club 5 To our new members : Evaluation Contest 6 Roll of Honour 7 Announcements 7 Important Dates 7 Meet Our Toastmaster Valentine s couple 8 Welcome to Canning Vale Toastmasters and congratulations on taking that first step in your Toastmasters journey. Every member is willing to help you at any time and we will all support you with your progress towards your goals. To make the most of your membership, be sure to read A Toastmasters Promise in your Competent Communicator Manual. We all look forward to watching you become the speaker and leader you want to be. Editorial Welcome to the first newsletter of I hope everyone has had a good start to This newsletter issue will look back at the Toastmasters events in January and February. January is the month of NEW YEAR and February is the month of Saint Valentine s! If you continue reading through this issue, you will notice the Chinese New Year and Saint Valentine s theme! I hope you enjoy the newsletter just as much as I enjoy making them. :)

2 Page 2 First meeting of 2014 Meeting #281 Welcome to the first meeting for the year!! Toastmasters meeting at... Sanctuary Waters Park Nice park! Gift from TM I want one too.. The meeting was great! Chinese new year meeting New clothes for Chinese New Year! :P During Chinese Chinese New Year themed meeting. New Year, the Looking Red! colour red is Me in my finest.. commonly worn Indian outfit because it is And it was also my birthday! :) believed that red will scare away evil spirits and bad fortune. I am your toastmaster for the evening. Canning Vale Toastmasters

3 V o l u m e 3, I s s u e 3 P a g e 3 Chinese new year meeting cont d Prosperity Shared At our Chinese New Year Meeting, every attendee received a red velvet bag with a few coins in, which is a Chinese tradition at New Year. This tradition is thought to bring prosperity to the receiver. This year, I asked our members to keep the coins and return the bag the following week with a donation for a children s charity, to share our prosperity. Our members were generous enough to return about $40 which I donated to a local children s charity which helps abused children, Parkerville Children and Youth Care. Here s their mission statement which I hope tells you why I chose this charity. We strive to protect, care and advocate for children, youth and their families who have experienced trauma from abuse and to provide a therapeutic environment that will assist their recovery and potential for growth. Here s a link to their website. Please have a look and see for yourself. Robyn Richards Member achievements Maksud being the star of the night Rabeya s speech debut at the CVTM Other moments from the meetings Your club officers hard at work First aid lesson from Susanty Have you met baby Kira?

4 P a g e 4 Leadership Great leaders promote teamwork, encourage excellence, foster growth and even offer criticism in a productive way. There are many good reasons why Toastmasters teaches both communication and leadership skills. People with good communication skills are more likely to be promoted to leadership positions, and good leaders need communication skills to be effective. Leadership is difficult to define. It s an abstract concept that evokes as many different reactions as there are different kinds of people. Yet most of us know good leadership when we see it, and we can often tell when good leadership is missing by the way a team or organization struggles without it. At Toastmasters, our leadership training program identifies the following areas as essential to quality, effective leadership: Mission. A clear mission helps the leader to focus the team so that they can ignore distractions and pay attention to what s most important. Values. When a leader can demonstrate values that are in sync with the company s mission and the team s goals, everyone benefits. Planning and goal-setting. With clear goals and effective planning, leaders make their expectations understood and team members know what to do at all times. Delegating authority. The job of leadership is usually too big to handle alone. By sharing responsibilities with the team, a leader instils a sense of purpose and empowerment. Team building. Establishing trust, playing to individual strengths, encouraging people to work together all are important aspects of team building. Giving feedback. Constructive, concise and timely feedback is essential to each team member s success, and to the success of the team as a whole. Coaching team members. A good leader must take on the role of trainer now and t h e n, p r o v i d i n g e x p e r t a d v i c e, encouragement and suggestions for improvement. Motivating people. By providing a good example, learning each team member s needs and giving rewards and incentives when appropriate, a leader can inspire people to achieve higher levels of performance. Working for the team. Great leaders encourage participation, facilitate communication and provide an environment where team success is more likely to occur. Resolving conflict. Conflict between team members is inevitable, and not always a bad thing. A leader s job is to resolve the conflict in a just and reasonable way so that productivity and morale do not suffer. Do you know Word of the month Proliferation (noun): - rapid growth or increase in numbers E.g. Proliferation of Technology Your Competent Leadership (CL) manual is your guide to being a competent leader? Look out for your role in the meeting agenda. If you are Toastmaster, Table Topic Master, Evaluator or Grammarian, check out the respective project in your CL manual prior to the meeting. Do remember to bring your CL manual along to your meeting and get any of the fellow toastmasters to evaluate your performance! C a n n i n g V a l e T o a s t m a s t e r s

5 V o l u m e 3, I s s u e 3 P a g e 5 Going beyond our club by Chandana Weerasekera Joining Toastmasters has helped improve our communication and leadership skills without any doubts. At Toastmasters, we are able to think differently outside our comfort zone. It pushes us to a higher skill level so that we can explore our hidden talents. In addition, by completing our Toastmaster educational program, we are able to know where we stand. The workshop Going beyond your club that I presented on the 18th February was supposed to be accompanied by PowerPoint slides. However, on some occasion, technology fails when you really need them most. When I knew the slides are not going to work I made up my mind to do the presentation without the slides. After all I thought being in Toastmasters for quite some time I should be able to make a presentation without the help of a projector and slides. This is one example of how being a Toastmaster has transformed me into a more confident speaker. However, I believe that any member in the club will have the question is this all we have? I thought it is going to be more exciting after joining for some time. The answer is.. NO! There are plenty of opportunities available throughout the year, such as Club contests, being a club officer and Toastmasters Convention. It is your responsibility to explore them so you better be ready for any eventuality and give yourself a chance to experience your unexplored talents. If you are looking for opportunities to exploit your hidden talents, or further develop your leadership and public speaking skills, Toastmasters is the perfect place to achieve that! Leadership opportunity There are several officer positions within each Toastmasters club, both to spread the workload fairly and to expand the leadership opportunities for club members. In our club, the club committee comprises of President, Vice President Education (VPE), Vice President Membership (VPM), Vice President Public Relations (VPPR), Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant at Arms (SAA). If your goal is to further develop your leadership skills, now is the time to consider taking on one of the club officer roles. For more information about these roles, feel free to speak to the respective club officers. President Mike Palmer VPE Mark Richards VPM Julia Cao VPPR Huili Leow Secretary Andre Sequeira Treasurer John Cecchi SAA Carey-Ann Brett You can also read more about club officer roles at club-officer-roles/ We need you! Do you need to complete Project 6, 8 or 10 in your Competent Leadership Manual? Do you enjoy writing or wanting to improve your writing skills? Are you good at organising? Do you want to learn how to produce newsletter? If you answered yes to any of the questions, please do not hesitate to contact Huili! We would love to help you achieve your goal as well as having you contributing to the Positive Promotion Premiership (PPP). (You will receive a lot of information about the PPP soon)

6 P a g e 6 Club s Evaluation Contest John Palmer entertained us with his story on how he taught hippos to dance sideways and zig zagging Left to right: Angela (Chair), Saliya, Chandana, Vanessa, Edward, Steve, Mike Palmer. Table topics is like telling a mini creative story. So next time you are stuck on a table topics question, make up your answer! William the Chief Judge Test Speaker, Josh McNess, from Rockingham TM Club Contest results: Third place: Vanessa; Second place: Saliya; First place: Mike Palmer C a n n i n g V a l e T o a s t m a s t e r s

7 V o l u m e 3, I s s u e 3 P a g e 7 Roll of Honour CC Frith Veitch CC Saliya Ranasinghe Announcements! We need your help! Our club is hosting the District 17 convention in May and we need your skills to help make this a success. Contact Emma for information about the roles available. Positive Promotion Premiership (PPP) Help us win the PPP award at the 2014 convention! Grab the Toastmasters Magazine with the club stamp from the club and place it at your surgery/dentist waiting room. Send your picture evidence to Huili at hleow13@gmail.com. Power Up On The Peninsula District 17 Convention May th 2014 Registration is NOW OPEN for the May District Convention. Book your place NOW for the early bird discount rate before 1st February Note: Canning Vale will be subsidising all member s tickets to this outstanding event. For more information, visit the website: International Speech Contest Tuesday 4th March This is your chance to compete in the contest that could see you go on to represent our District at the semi finals held at the Toastmasters International Convention in Kuala Lumpur in August. Power Up on the Peninsula Important Dates Weekend May District 17 Convention Registration now opens, hurry in and book your place today at:

8 P a g e 8 Canning Vale Toastmasters That concludes the Jan/Feb newsletter issue. I hope you enjoyed the first two months of Time passes so fast; There are only 10 more months to the year. What will you achieve in these months? We meet every Tuesday 6.30pm Canning Vale College Library Dumbarton Road Phone: (Mike) Phone: (Mark) president@toastmasterscv.net Toastmasters Where leaders are made Find us on Facebook or Twitter Canning Vale Meet Our Toastmaster Valentine s couple... Julia & Eric What do you like best about Canning Vale Toastmasters? We believe our lovely, kind & warmhearted members are the treasure of the club. We have been making friends with many great people who help us a lot on both our language and life. Why did you join Toastmasters? As new immigrants, our English was pretty bad at that time we arrived in Australia 15 months ago. We were eagerly looking for an opportunity to practice language and one of our friends happened to be a member of a Toastmasters club. She suggested to us to have a try. In order to improve our English and merge into the local society. We searched online for the closest club and joined CVTM. How long have you been members? 14 months. What do you do for a living? Eric is a software engineer and Julia is an export documentation clerk. Has Toastmasters helped you in your job and if so, how? Definitely. We were scared to speak at the beginning, but now we have good relationship with colleagues and can easily make phone calls which was deemed a very difficult task in the past. Of course, we tried very hard to learn and to improve, and Toastmasters provided us with a great arena. What s next for you in Toastmasters? We would like to be a confident speaker and will keep working towards this goal.