On this evening we got an opportunity to show our guests what it truly is to be a toastmaster. Our meeting room is in a restaurant inside a school, and the 19th of August was in the middle of the school holidays. We had made arrangements with the school to allow us access to our venue during this period but there seems to have been a miscommunication. We got to our venue, and it was locked. Again, in true Toastmasters style, as club officers we had arrived very early for the meeting and we still had time to do something about the problem at hand. Other ideas we had were to quickly find an alternative venue around. Then we realised that there were tables and chairs outside, and the weather was not bad at all. If we could organise some lighting, we could have a meeting venue just like that. Which is exactly what we did, we arranged ourselves a beautiful evening and we were ready by the time our guests arrived. We had an one of our best meetings.
We had 19 members and guests in attendance. The word of the evening was “peruse”, which means to read something in a thorough or careful. The toast of the evening was done by Sipho Mda, and he proposed a toast to Mohammed Qahtani, the winner of the 2015 Toastmasters International Speech Contest.
Our Toastmaster of the Evening was Dick Hallett, and we had the following guests at our meeting: Philani Khojua, Larry Khumalo, Mlugsisi Shongwe, Noltule Mpisi, Ellen Ratsou, Mokgethoa Mokola, and Musa Ngema.
We had four successful prepared speeches:
- CC2 by Lebo Matubatuba titled ” Fear” evaluated by Sipho Mda
- CC5 by Linda Thompson titled “Winter Retreats”, evaluated by Dick Hallett
- CC7 by Zandile Manana titled “A Case of Marketing” evaluated by Luther Feros
- ACB by Tinahe Ncube titled “Share” evaluated by Des Smith
We had table topics and all our members and guests participated.
The Grizzly Bear was awarded to all who attended the meeting given the circumstances of it being an outdoor candlelit meeting.
Next meeting scheduled for Wednesday 2 September 2015.