YMCA and
the USA - the start of Toastmasters in the USA
Toastmasters International started in the USA at a YMCA in about 1924. It was called Toastmasters to make it sound like a social occasion. In the sixties it started spreading across Europe and to other English-speaking countries.
Toastmasters Clubs Spreading Worldwide
Now clubs are in the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa, plus French, Spanish, German, Chinese Japanese and Arabic speaking clubs with speech instruction manuals in those languages. If you are already a member of a club you can speak at any club worldwide which is able and willing to offer you a speaking slot. Should you happen to be near or be interested in visited a club connected to finance, computing or health, you will often be welcome as a visitor. You might be an evaluator of speeches or a language evaluator or grammarian, at an in-house business club, especially if your first language is English and theirs isn't. If you are not a member, but travelling on business or pleasure, you will be welcome at all of the open clubs.
Who So Many Singapore Clubs?
My first visit to an overseas club was in Singapore. The country is small, but has a huge number of clubs. One reason is that long-running previous prime minister (1959-90) and now mentor minister Lee Kuan Yew, who went to Cambridge, is a great advocate of education and speaking the English Language. He wanted Singapore not to educate a nation of low-paid waiters, with expat foreigners taking all the highly paid jobs, but to make every Singaporean want themselves and their children to have good education and skilled employment. As a result many businesses start in-house clubs to train their staff to present in English. So you can go to a club where all four speeches are business presentation with diagrams on Powerpoint slides.
Members and Guests Seen On Slides
One of the most memorable meetings I attended was at an insurance company. The room has a floor to ceiling screen behind a stage. I volunteered to speak on a table topic. My name was typed into a laptop and my name and the topic subject appeared on the giant screen. Later I was the topic and again my name and topic appeared on screen with the added word congratulations - best topic!
Easy To Find Central Clubs
I remember the fist meeting I had attended. I looked up toastmasters international find a club and found two clubs, at the YMCA and YWCA in the centre of Singapore. The YMCA club is right next to an underground railway station (MRT Dhoby Ghaut). Singapore is a rapidly expanding area for clubs, over 100, a choice of three to half a dozen most weekday evenings and some Saturday afternoons.
It's a chance to learn more about the local culture, and other cultures.
The first club in Singapore is still the largest and meets in the Sheraton Towers Hotel.
Fun Food For Visitors
At Singapore's centrally located club, especially those in hotels, visitors may be charged a small fee to cover the cost of food. If you pick an out of town club in a community centre, the club is often subsidised by the community centre (paid for out of what in the UK would be called local rates or council tax).
A start-up club may be given cheap or free accommodation, free bottles of water, even free food. So visitors get free snacks, usually brought in from the nearest takeway (could be noodles, rice, dumplings, fruit, glutinous cake or regular cake). If you are lucky, food is made by a member or their family.
Colourful Badges For Visitors
Most clubs have a welcome table with copies of the Toastmasters magazine, a guest book for you to sign with your name and contact details, and badges. Badges range from rolls of address stickers or conference type badges to luminous green and orange stars written on with felt tip pen in calligraphy.
Visitor On Agenda
If you have had the foresight to email in advance and offer to do a role, you may be asked to send a brief CV. Then with luck your name will be on the agenda, and you will be introduced as a VIP in the President's opening speech.
President's Welcome
Bukit Timah's President gave a welcome speech featuring somebody who had inspired her. This was a woman who had lost a limb but went on to climb Everest. A Singaporean.
I thought that if I ever became president again, it would be a good idea to pick the story of somebody inspirational for each welcome speech. In a six month period with two meetings a month allowing for two meetings missed because of national holidays, you need to pick only ten. For example, my ten would be: Winston Churchill, Anne Frank, Sarah Bernhardt, Helen Keller, US President Lincoln.
Gifts
Some clubs give small wrapped gifts to the visiting General Evaluator, all VIP visitors acting as evaluators, or everybody volunteering to do a table topic (impromptu speech).
Grammar, English Dictionaries And Dialects
At the YMCA Club many of the Singaporeans speak Chinese (Mandarin) as a first language. (Singaporeans also often speak other Chinese dialects such as Hokkien.) A dictionary is on the table to help the Grammarian define the Word of the Day, check spelling, and grammar, and settle disputes!
Names, topics and times are written on a whiteboard or blackboard or flipchart so that the audience can vote for the best.
Selecting Topics
The table topics are sometimes topics picked off the table or out of a bag by a volunteer. Better still, the topics master announces the topic, waits while you all think what you will say in case you are chosen, then pounces on somebody who is volunteered.
Another topics person skilled in crafts gave topics with each topic in a seasonally decorated paper cup stuck into a flower arranger's green sponge base, attached like a vase of assorted colour paper flowers hidden behind the flower face on a concertina flag. Most ingenious.
Baskets And Glasses For Voting Slips
The votes for topics are not merely collected by hand but more stylishly, at a hotel in a handy wineglass, a larger brandy glass, or perhaps in a large ice bucket. At a seaside conference the slips were collected in a plastic pail. Another club used a coloured box with ribbons, probably a discarded chocolate box, which looked like a miniature hat box. I've also seen straw and raffia baskets, even an embroidered container made by a member.
Winner's Prize And/Or Certificate
At one club recently I was given a Best Table topics shiny card slightly larger than the usual address car with the club's address and details on the back. I thought this was handy for two reasons. Firstly, you can remember where you got the award. (I've previously written on the back of white official ribbons, and on the back of small certificates printed on white paper.) The award also reminds you where to go when you pay another visit.
I have heard speeches in the USA, UK, Thailand, Singapore and China.
I've eaten funny and fascinating foreign. I've met funny and fascinating people. I've won prizes. Learned about other cultures. Taken ideas across the world from the UK to Singapore and from Singapore back to London. I've met charming Chinese people, Indians, Afro-Caribbeans, Americans in their homeland and overseas, people from Poland in Singapore, British people worldwide and Irish people all over Britain and prize-winning speakers, including the worldwide winners. What's not to like?
On your next holiday or business trip in your own country or overseas, I recommend you look for a Toastmasters International speakers club. If you cannot travel today, you can travel around on the internet. See speeches, meetings, toastmasters tips, serious and sad or happy, informative or entertaining, humorous and hilarious speeches worldwide.
Toastmasters International started in the USA at a YMCA in about 1924. It was called Toastmasters to make it sound like a social occasion. In the sixties it started spreading across Europe and to other English-speaking countries.
Toastmasters Clubs Spreading Worldwide
Now clubs are in the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa, plus French, Spanish, German, Chinese Japanese and Arabic speaking clubs with speech instruction manuals in those languages. If you are already a member of a club you can speak at any club worldwide which is able and willing to offer you a speaking slot. Should you happen to be near or be interested in visited a club connected to finance, computing or health, you will often be welcome as a visitor. You might be an evaluator of speeches or a language evaluator or grammarian, at an in-house business club, especially if your first language is English and theirs isn't. If you are not a member, but travelling on business or pleasure, you will be welcome at all of the open clubs.
Who So Many Singapore Clubs?
My first visit to an overseas club was in Singapore. The country is small, but has a huge number of clubs. One reason is that long-running previous prime minister (1959-90) and now mentor minister Lee Kuan Yew, who went to Cambridge, is a great advocate of education and speaking the English Language. He wanted Singapore not to educate a nation of low-paid waiters, with expat foreigners taking all the highly paid jobs, but to make every Singaporean want themselves and their children to have good education and skilled employment. As a result many businesses start in-house clubs to train their staff to present in English. So you can go to a club where all four speeches are business presentation with diagrams on Powerpoint slides.
Members and Guests Seen On Slides
One of the most memorable meetings I attended was at an insurance company. The room has a floor to ceiling screen behind a stage. I volunteered to speak on a table topic. My name was typed into a laptop and my name and the topic subject appeared on the giant screen. Later I was the topic and again my name and topic appeared on screen with the added word congratulations - best topic!
Easy To Find Central Clubs
I remember the fist meeting I had attended. I looked up toastmasters international find a club and found two clubs, at the YMCA and YWCA in the centre of Singapore. The YMCA club is right next to an underground railway station (MRT Dhoby Ghaut). Singapore is a rapidly expanding area for clubs, over 100, a choice of three to half a dozen most weekday evenings and some Saturday afternoons.
It's a chance to learn more about the local culture, and other cultures.
The first club in Singapore is still the largest and meets in the Sheraton Towers Hotel.
Fun Food For Visitors
At Singapore's centrally located club, especially those in hotels, visitors may be charged a small fee to cover the cost of food. If you pick an out of town club in a community centre, the club is often subsidised by the community centre (paid for out of what in the UK would be called local rates or council tax).
A start-up club may be given cheap or free accommodation, free bottles of water, even free food. So visitors get free snacks, usually brought in from the nearest takeway (could be noodles, rice, dumplings, fruit, glutinous cake or regular cake). If you are lucky, food is made by a member or their family.
Colourful Badges For Visitors
Most clubs have a welcome table with copies of the Toastmasters magazine, a guest book for you to sign with your name and contact details, and badges. Badges range from rolls of address stickers or conference type badges to luminous green and orange stars written on with felt tip pen in calligraphy.
Visitor On Agenda
If you have had the foresight to email in advance and offer to do a role, you may be asked to send a brief CV. Then with luck your name will be on the agenda, and you will be introduced as a VIP in the President's opening speech.
President's Welcome
Bukit Timah's President gave a welcome speech featuring somebody who had inspired her. This was a woman who had lost a limb but went on to climb Everest. A Singaporean.
I thought that if I ever became president again, it would be a good idea to pick the story of somebody inspirational for each welcome speech. In a six month period with two meetings a month allowing for two meetings missed because of national holidays, you need to pick only ten. For example, my ten would be: Winston Churchill, Anne Frank, Sarah Bernhardt, Helen Keller, US President Lincoln.
Gifts
Some clubs give small wrapped gifts to the visiting General Evaluator, all VIP visitors acting as evaluators, or everybody volunteering to do a table topic (impromptu speech).
Grammar, English Dictionaries And Dialects
At the YMCA Club many of the Singaporeans speak Chinese (Mandarin) as a first language. (Singaporeans also often speak other Chinese dialects such as Hokkien.) A dictionary is on the table to help the Grammarian define the Word of the Day, check spelling, and grammar, and settle disputes!
Names, topics and times are written on a whiteboard or blackboard or flipchart so that the audience can vote for the best.
Selecting Topics
The table topics are sometimes topics picked off the table or out of a bag by a volunteer. Better still, the topics master announces the topic, waits while you all think what you will say in case you are chosen, then pounces on somebody who is volunteered.
Another topics person skilled in crafts gave topics with each topic in a seasonally decorated paper cup stuck into a flower arranger's green sponge base, attached like a vase of assorted colour paper flowers hidden behind the flower face on a concertina flag. Most ingenious.
Baskets And Glasses For Voting Slips
The votes for topics are not merely collected by hand but more stylishly, at a hotel in a handy wineglass, a larger brandy glass, or perhaps in a large ice bucket. At a seaside conference the slips were collected in a plastic pail. Another club used a coloured box with ribbons, probably a discarded chocolate box, which looked like a miniature hat box. I've also seen straw and raffia baskets, even an embroidered container made by a member.
Winner's Prize And/Or Certificate
At one club recently I was given a Best Table topics shiny card slightly larger than the usual address car with the club's address and details on the back. I thought this was handy for two reasons. Firstly, you can remember where you got the award. (I've previously written on the back of white official ribbons, and on the back of small certificates printed on white paper.) The award also reminds you where to go when you pay another visit.
I have heard speeches in the USA, UK, Thailand, Singapore and China.
I've eaten funny and fascinating foreign. I've met funny and fascinating people. I've won prizes. Learned about other cultures. Taken ideas across the world from the UK to Singapore and from Singapore back to London. I've met charming Chinese people, Indians, Afro-Caribbeans, Americans in their homeland and overseas, people from Poland in Singapore, British people worldwide and Irish people all over Britain and prize-winning speakers, including the worldwide winners. What's not to like?
On your next holiday or business trip in your own country or overseas, I recommend you look for a Toastmasters International speakers club. If you cannot travel today, you can travel around on the internet. See speeches, meetings, toastmasters tips, serious and sad or happy, informative or entertaining, humorous and hilarious speeches worldwide.
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