The competition season is finally over and we are now back to club meetings. Our last evening was hosting the area L3 humorous and table topics contest, which was an absolutely amazing night of comedy. Last night we had our first Johannesburg Toastmasters Club meeting in nearly a month, what an exciting evening it was.
This meeting was following the District Conference that took place last week in East London, the UbuntuCon. Which was also the District humorous speech contest and the table topics contest. We had two representatives from our club at this conference; Di Sharp and Des Smith, and they both shared with us their feedback of their experience. A major achievement for our division at this conference was Division L (our division) winning the Golden Quarter Award, having had the largest growth among all divisions in District 74. The trophy is currently doing a tour in the whole division, and last night was our turn with the trophy. WELL DONE DIVISION L! WE DID IT!
The word of the evening was “zealous”. Which means one with a tireless devotion for a cause, an ideal, or a person, and determination in its furtherance. Largely inspired by the zealous efforts we put as division L to win the golden quarter award. We had 16 members and guests in attendance. The toast of the evening was done by Amiel Holollal, and he gave a toast to the Springbok team and their bounce back from our surprise loss to Japan. The Toast to Toastmasters International was done by our area director Luther Feros, telling a personal story of how Toastmasters has given him an edge in his career.
Our Toastmaster was our Christian Nyakanyanga
We had three successful prepared speeches:
- CC2 by Ellen Ratsoeu titled ” Taking the First Step” evaluated by Di Sharp
- CC2 by Sipho Mda titled “Jozi Maboneng”, evaluated by Njabulo Thela
- CC6 by Des Smith titled “Raising Lindsay”, evaluated by Luther Feros
Our table topics session became another comedy show. All the speakers decided to give humorous speeches, it was hilarious. The topic was a scenario where you were the springbok coach at half time during the game we lost against Japan. We were all in tears from laughter. The Grizzly Bear was awarded to our two guests; Camilla Smolicz and Zama Khumalo, they took meeting roles for their very , time keeper and “uhm counter”. They did a sterling job.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday the 21st of October.