The new alliance between Rotary and Toastmasters International was first announced at the Convention in Hamburg, 2019.
Tonight, we had Christine Heeger from Toastmasters Berlaymont as keynote speaker. In her professional life, she is Senior Partner at Phoenix Executive.
Christine started by recounting an unpleasant experience when asked to give a stand-up presentation some years ago. She decided to do better next time and looked on-line for means to improve in that area. There she found Toastmasters.
Toastmasters International was set up around 1924. Only as of 1973 women were allowed. In 1970 a woman enrolled but under a false name.
Toastmasters is a worldwide nonprofit educational organization that empowers people to become more effective communicators and leaders. It has 352.000 members, organized in 16.400 clubs in 141 countries.
At all gatherings there is always a lot of applause, which gives a warm and appreciative atmosphere.
The structure of the meetings is the same everywhere, regardless of where you travel and join a meeting.
A typical meeting is as follows:
1. Table topics – impromptu speeches
2. Prepared speeches
3. Evaluations
‘Pathways’ is Toastmasters education program.
Meetings are twice per month. Rotary and Toastmasters have much in common; membership of both can easily be combined.
Toastmasters is not only about speeches, but also about leadership. The typical fee is €100 per year.
In addition to Christine, we also had Carsten Wendt as a guest, from the Brussels Toastmaster club. He has offered to co-organise the speech training seminar for GITO, together with Simon, Karsten, and Hartmut, on 25/11. It was rather a coincidence to have two toastmasters at the same meeting, but a great addition in the discussion.
Toastmasters Intenational is a non-profit organisation with the aim to help acquire and improve skills in public speaking, effective communication, and leadership. In our geographical environment, there are 17 clubs in Brussels, and one in Leuven.
Both Rotarians and Toastmasters are encouraged to join a club meeting (for the time being, all online) and find out if it could be interesting to join.
As part of the alliance between the two clubs, Rotary offers a series of leadership and communication courses to Rotary and Rotaract members, in the Learning Center:
The first courses, now available in multiple languages in the Learning Center, discuss fundamental leadership skills like motivation, integrity, and team inclusiveness. You’ll also discover how ethics, decision making, goal setting, and delegating help you develop the skills necessary to lead a team effectively. Watch this video to learn how to find the courses in the Learning Center and how to get the most out of them.