Last Tuesday saw another enjoyable meeting of the The Galtees Toastmasters club. We had speeches from Peter Langley, who despite planning every meeting, found time to craft a speech towards his competent communicator award – a busy man! Similarly, our president, Mary Meany progressed on her advanced communicator track, with a lovely humorous speech. Mary has a great gift of being able to make the ordinary, everyday incidents in life into funny speeches. Similarly Conor O’Brien takes his speeches from his experiences and shares his knowledge in a lovely manner.

The evaluators of the speeches were Brian O’Farrell, Dick Lyons and John Sherlock. Each evaluator pointed out to the speakers, the aspects of the speech that appealed to them and highlighted their skills, as we all learn from feedback. They also pointed out an element to develop further to enable the speakers to become better as speakers. Similarly, impromptu speaking is a vital skill that we need when we do interviews, when we are asked questions or need to pose a question, perhaps in a work situation or at a meeting of some sort. At Toastmasters, the Topics session enables us to develop those skills so we can speak off the cuff in a coherent, practiced manner. Practice is the key and that’s what we get in the Toastmasters Club.

Neil McAuliffe posed the questions last week an challenged and stimulated the grey matter of all present!

In a new development for The Galtees Toastmasters we have embarked on a brilliantly rewarding, educative process for some members of the club. For the past few weeks we have been conducting a Youth Leadership Programme with the girls in Transition Year in Presentation Secondary School, Mitchelstown. This programme brings the fun, challenge and learning of Toastmasters to the school setting. We are enjoying this so much. It is fantastic to see the skills of the girls developing as the weeks pass. Many of the girls have given two speeches in the class by now. In the first speech they gave, the girls found it challenging to speak for the allotted 3 to 4 minutes. Second time around they are using all their time. Their confidence is growing and the topics they are choosing to speak on are varied and fascinating.

To mark the end of the programme there will be a celebration and while we are looking forward to it, we also hate that we are entering the final few weeks of the initiative. It has been great!

Our next meeting is on Tuesday next, 19th November, as usual at The Firgrove Hotel, Mitchelstown at 8pm. We are on Facebook and on Twitter or email us on thegaltees@gmail.com.