On February 11, The Galtees Toastmasters had a lovely, meeting, where laughter was indeed a great medicine! We had 2 great advanced speeches and an advanced presentation, so a good mix of projects was present. Mary Meany gave a very poignant speech about a friend of hers who died recently and it was a beautifully evocative speech and a fitting tribute. Dick Lyons complemented her on her speech and gave her some recommendations to develop it further. Dick wasn’t the only one to complement her, I heard one person tell Mary that it was the best speech she ever gave! This is one of the great joys of Toastmasters - the encouragement and recommendations mean we really learn though participation and the evaluations we get and give.

The second speech was from Anne Lyons who gave us a great behind the scenes speech about Disney World in Florida - the scale of the theme park is immense and the engineering and logistics are incredible. Anne had clearly done a lot of research for this speech and Brian O’Farrell spoke about this in his evaluation.

Conor O’Brien gave a very challenging presentation on Handling Difficult Situations. Again this is an area in which the Toastmasters' manuals really help us learn: Conor did not merely give a speech about a challenging situation, he was required to create it and handle it, through role play. He told us about a problem and then in the audience he had hecklers, talkers, arguers and so on. Having done the ground work, Conor really had no control over what might happen next and he really did have some challenging personalities to manage, as people took the role play very seriously. Conor managed his audience very well and showed us all how challenging people in an audience can be given their voice, without dominating the situation. Máire Corbett in her evaluation complemented Conor for keeping cool and he really achieved the objectives of his project.

Apart from our meetings, members have been busy! In a new departure for us, we participated in the Wedding Fair, at The Firgrove Hotel. It was lovely to meet new people and share with them how membership of Toastmasters can help make the speeches on the 'big day' a great success.

YOUTH LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME

The Youth Leadership Programme is going well at CBS Secondary school, Mitchelstown. Having taken a break for midterm, we are back next week for the last of the boys to give their first speeches.

On Monday night, 17th February, we were delighted to be host club for the Club Officer Training for Area 17. We were pleased to welcome fellow Toastmasters from Fermoy, Charleville Failte and Speakeasy Mallow to The Firgrove, to hear how other clubs are doing and to hear from area governor, Anne Buckley and division governor Eddie O’Mahony, about updates and changes in the pipeline for the larger organisation.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday next (25th) at The Firgrove Hotel. Please do feel free to come along and see for yourself what we are all about. Remember, guest are never asked me speak, but are welcome to if they wish! Check us out on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!

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