New Club's Awards Beginning Next Year (2014)

Starting next meeting, January 4th of 2014, new ribbons will be awarded to those members who are working hard towards achieving the following awards:

• Ice Breaker Ribbon: 1st speech project for a new Toastmaster. To learn more about this project, you can find more details here.

• Competent Communicator Ribbon: CC Manual contains 10 speech projects each focusing on particular areas such as vocal variety, organizing speech, and others. For more information, please click this link.

• Competent Leader Ribbon: The Competent Leadership manual features 10 projects, which you complete while serving in various meeting roles and participating in other club activities such as helping with a newsletter or getting involved with a membership building campaign. An evaluator will give you feedback on each project, helping you to improve.

• Halfway to Competent Communicator Ribbon: Recognizes the accomplishment of completing half of the Competent Communication projects.

• Best Speaker Mini-Certificate

• Best Evaluator Mini-Certificate

• Best Table Topics Mini-Certificate

For more details about Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Club, you can visit their website here.

Toastmasters International is a world leader in communication and leadership development. Our membership is 292,000 strong. These members improve their speaking and leadership skills by attending one of the 14,350 clubs in 122 countries that make up our global network of meeting locations.

December 7 Meeting (Potluck Event/Pre-Holidays Celebration)

Hello Fellow Toastmasters,

I want to say thank you to all that attended our Dec. 7's very special Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Meeting.

Just a little re-cap of what went on:

We had 7 guests: Neeru, Shavon, Hamza, Ackter, Helen, Roshan, Tri

We had 14 CS Toastmaster members that attended: Jason, Connie, Samantha, Amar, Richard, Euna, Priya, Avi, Nadia, Rafiq, Odecca, Kyla, Sharon and myself.

Theme of the Meeting: Materialism. Rafiq, our Toastmaster/Chair of the day, did a great job in expanding with the theme of the day by exploring how Bhutan measures their quality of life or social progress. In fact, Bhutan is the only country that uses GNH, Gross National Happiness, officially. GNH value (versus GDP Gross Dosmetic Product) is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of the following measures (source Wikipedia, sorry Raf I wasn't able to write everything down :) ):

1. Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution
2. Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic
3. Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses
4. Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
5. Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics such as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits
6. Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates
7. Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.

An interesting theme which goes to say that money can't always buy happiness, and that happiness is dependent upon many other factors. We should all pay less attention to material things and spend more quality time to improve our relationships with our family, friends, and love ones.

Grammarian/Ah Counter: Samantha, with word of the day being 'Bumfuzzle' meaning to confuse

Quizmaster: Odecca

Timer: Jinky

General Evaluator: Connie

We had two speakers:

1. Priya delivered her third speech project (Get to the Point) and talked about Building a Successful Mentoring Relationship. Her speech was 6 minutes 47 seconds.

2. Kyla delivered her fifth speech project (Your Body Speaks) and talked about her experience doing the triathlon in 6:56:20 To Personal Victory. Her speech was 7 minutes and 10 seconds.

Our two evaluators were:

1. Neeru, a guest and a member of another Toastmasters' club in Burnhamthorpe, evaluated Priya's speech. Neeru's evaluation time was 3 minutes and 3 seconds.

2. Avi evaluated Kyla's speech. Connie's evaluation time was 2 minutes 22 seconds.

The 5 new members inducted during the meeting are: Avi, Priya, Richard, Sharon, and Amar.

Excellent Table Topics session by Rafiq. We had 9 table topics participants, both guests and CS members:

• Richard finishing at 1 minute 1 second
• Neeru finishing at 1 minute 13 seconds
• Ackter finishing at 59 seconds
• Amar finishing at 48 seconds
• Roshan finishing at 43 seconds
• Jason finishing at 59 seconds
• Shavon finishing at 1 minute 7 seconds
• Avi finishing at 1 minute 4 seconds
• Euna finishing at 1 minute 12 seconds

The awards went to:

Best Table Topics - Euna

Best Evaluator - Avi

Best Speaker - Kyla

We also collected a good amount of non-perishable goods to be donated to the Food Bank in support of our fellow Toastmaster Mark McKenzie's fundraising effort.

The meeting started a little bit late at 9:20 am, and finished early at 11:10 am.

We hope to see you on our next CS Toastmasters meeting on Dec. 14, which is our last meeting for the year 2013!

For those who have taken up roles last meeting and didn't get evaluated, please bring your CL manuals on December 14 and we will be happy to complete your evaluation for you.

We encourage you all to also sign up for roles and sign up to do your speeches for our upcoming meetings. If you have any questions, please feel free to email any of our executive members.

Have a good week everyone!

Jinky

What's Happening Next Meeting?

Updates: November 16 Meeting

Hello Fellow Toastmasters!

I want to say thank you to all that attended our Nov. 16 Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Meeting.

Just a little re-cap of what went on:

We had six guests: Omar, Shavon, Gyongyi, Hamza, Thomas, Mario

We had 12 CS Toastmaster members that attended: Jason, Kathleen, Connie, Samantha, Venkatesh, Jocelyn, Amar, Richard, Euna, Priya, Avi, and myself.

Theme of the Meeting: Remembering Fallen Heroes. We honour and remember all of our family and friends who have served selflessly to protect and fight for peace, not only here in Canada, but also abroad, in other countries.

We had three speakers:

1. Priya delivered her second speech project (Organize your Speech) and talked about what one should do to Retire Happy. Her speech was 6 minutes 32 seconds.

2. Avi delivered his second speech project (Organize your Speech) and talked about the Essentials to get Hired. His speech was 7 minutes and 5 seconds.

3. Jason delivered his fourth speech (How to Say it) and talked about one of Life's luxuries, chocolate. His speech was 6 minutes and 39 seconds.

Our three evaluators were:

1. Jocelyn evaluated Priya's speech. Jocelyn's evaluation time was 4 minutes 38 seconds. She also elaborated on benefits of being an evaluator.

2. Connie evaluated Avi's speech. Connie's evaluation time was 2 minutes 22 seconds.

3. Mario evaluated Jason's speech. Mario's evaluation time was 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Excellent Table Topics session by Connie. We had 6 table topics participants (Richard, Gyongyi, Avi, Jinky, Thomas, Kathleen) and all finished within 2 minutes.

The awards went to:

Best Table Topics - Richard and Kathleen

Best Evaluator - Mario

Best Speaker - Avi

The meeting started a little bit late at 9:20 am, and finished on time at 11:10 am.

I hope to see you on our next CS Toastmasters meeting on Dec. 7. We will have induction of new members of our club and a potluck event to celebrate Jocelyn's and Connie's 2nd place and 3rd place win at Division C Table Topics and Humorous Contest and also as our Holiday celebration.

For those who have taken up roles last meeting and didn't get evaluated, please bring your CL manuals on December 7th and I will be happy to complete your evaluation for you.

I encourage you all to also sign up for roles and sign up to do your speeches for our upcoming meetings here. If you have any questions, please feel free to email any of our executive members.

Jinky Austria

Chair l November 16 Meeting

Learning More About Meeting Roles

Are you ready to challenge yourself by taking some roles during a meeting? 
Do you know how you're going to successfully do it? Check out this video:



To sign up for roles in advance, kindly check this link. If you are unable to access the link, kindly email our VP of Ed at vped-1120086@toastmastersclubs.org.

Related links: 

• Toastmasters Meeting Roles
• Meeting Role Guides

Toastmasters

Where Leaders Are Made

We're Growing!

Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Club would like to welcome the following new members in our family:

• Avijit Bose
• Priyanka Taneja
• Amar Khan
• Mariella Rios
• Sharon

We look forward to helping you achieve your goals!

Kindest Regards,

Odecca Joy Ordonez

President

Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Club

Comfortably Speaking Toastmasters Won Two Golds!!!

Toastmasters Jocelyn Vezina (DTM) and Connie Yuen bagged 2 1st Place awards during the Area 45 Humorous and Table Topics Speech Contests. The event details were as follows:

Date:  October 17, 2013

Time: 6:00 pm

Location: Peel Chinese Community Service Hub (Golder Square Centre) Unit 81

Address:  1177 Central Parkway West

We are so proud of you, Jocelyn and Connie!!

Let us support Jocelyn and Connie as they conquer their next performance in the Division Level. For more details, please register here.

See you all there!!!