Ibrahim joined Victoria Quay at the beginning of March this year. He found out about us from a stall at Murdoch University conducted by members of Western Founders Club. He came here early this year as an Exchange student from Michigan Tech University to do one semester at Murdoch University, studying Business Management & Psychology. His home is in Washington DC, the capital of the United States. He is returning home later this month.

He has a keen interest in working with groups of children in a training and mentoring role. That sometimes kept him from our meetings, but he nevertheless completed the first 3 speeches from the Communication and Leadership Manual in his brief time with us. “Something unexpected” was the title of his third speech delivered at our meeting on June 2nd. It certainly was something unexpected. After a brief introduction explaining his desire to take part in the Peace Corps, the group of young Americans who volunteer to serve overseas for two years, he read us the submission he has composed to go with his application. It is printed below.

Ibrahim, we wish you could stay longer with us. Your energy and off-beat humour brightened our meetings, while your enthusiastic commitment to your beliefs and ideals has been inspirational. We will miss you, but we know you have something more important to take on. Keep in touch with us, Ibrahim. Let us know what you are doing.

Application to join the Peace Corps

Up until my third year in elementary school I wasn’t sure about anything in life. I developed the characteristics of being mischievous, uncertain, and at times melancholic. At this point in my life I was confused and disheartened. All my friends had fathers who supplemented their growth whereas I only had a mother. Yes, she guided me through childhood, but at the end of the day only a man can teach a boy to become a man.

At the time, my elementary school was blessed with a government initiative to provide us students with mentors whom would cater to our needs on an individual basis. I was amongst the lucky bunch to receive a mentor. Troy, a man of mature age, full beard, wide spectacles, and a regal persona became my mentor. After only two sessions he developed a great understanding of my character. With this, he instilled something in me which even today I’m cognisant of and cherish deep in my heart. Though simple were his words, benevolent was the impact. He told me “when you shake a person’s hand you look them in the eye and give them a firm grip”. I was a timid eight year old, who at that particular moment felt as if I’d rather give up all the ice cream in the world than to take on his request. But he was a man of persistence and discipline… he made me practice.

The beginning of our weekly meetings became stare downs and hand strengthening exercises. And surely in time my confidence and dexterity grew. I no longer gazed thoughtlessly at the floor upon shaking his hand. No, I now looked him in the eye and squeezed his hand with all the strength an eight year old could conjure up. Thanks to Troy I became more confident. I treated myself with respect, spoke with assurance, kept my clothes clean, performed with excellence in class and most of all I carried myself with pride and exuberance. I owe this boost in morale and self efficacy to a man who knew so little about me yet offered me his time, effort, kindness and confidence.

Throughout my childhood I came across many figures that impacted my life. Though different in nature, whether it was as a neighbour or football coach, the common characteristic these individuals shared was the passion of helping others. During my early years in high school I too developed this passion. From peer-mediating at school to camp counselling for at-risk youth, I naturally found myself within such circumstances. My passion was sparked by those who took time out of their lives to bring joy into the lives of others.

I want to join the Peace Corps not only to give back to the community but to build and be a part of one. Many youth today don’t have the luck or luxury I had of being inspired. Through the Peace Corps I want to continue this cycle of humanitarianism. I want to bring hope and inspiration to the lives of youth. I want to create a foundation, a community which promotes social welfare and tranquillity. Every child deserves one, for it takes a community to raise a child.

The Contest Schedule

1.  Club Contests – at Victoria Quay on February 17th (Evaluation) and 24th (International)

2.  Area W21 Contests at Gateway (Fremantle Bowling Club) on Tuesday, March 16th

3.  Western Division Contests at Fremantle Bowing Club on Sunday afternoon, March 28th

4.  District 73 Contests at Creswick, Victoria from Friday May 15th-Sunday May 17th

Advice for Contestants – the Evaluation Contest

All Club Members are eligible, except those who are District Officers – David, Mark, Peter and Tony.  We will have a speaker from another club who will be evaluated by the contestants in a 3 minute evaluation.  The contest will be judged by our members who are not contestants.  There will be a workshop about judging.

The Evaluation is for 3 minutes, not 2.

Use the CRC format – Commend / Recommend / Commend.

Include a Summary at the end – a brief restatement of your key points.

Pay careful attention to your Recommendations
use a What Why How Show format
identify clearly the Recommendation ( What), state why it is important ( Why), explain how to do it (How) and demonstrate it (Show)

Advice for Contestants – the International Contest

To enter this contestants must have completed at least 6 speeches from the Competent Communicator Manual. The contest will be judged by our members who are not contestants  after a workshop about judging.

Be Inspirational International Contest speeches should have an inspirational message which is relevant and significant to the audience..

Get laughs – It’s important to start with an arresting opening and to get a laugh in the first minute or so.  It isn’t a Humorous Speech, but winners always embroider the serious message with a lot of fun.

Work on the conclusion – The speech needs a strong conclusion which includes some kind of reacapitulation summary of the main point.

If all this sounds daunting, that’s why you need to enter our club contest and start working to get to the world final.  Our member, Cliff Boer, got there.

If you would like any further help or advice ring me

David Nicholas
9457 6468

Have a look at our Poster

The meeting room

In 4 weeks time we will be celebrating our 700^th meeting.  It’s quite a while since Victoria Quay had its first meeting on Victoria Quay wharf in April, 1995.  Peter Law and  Mark Hamilton both work at the Leeuwin Barracks in  Fremantle.  They have invited the Club to celebrate the occasion at Leeuwin.  A few of our members went there for lunch this week to check out the venue.  We thought it was excellent.  You can get an idea of the meeting venue from this shot.

An outdoors meeting?

On the terrace

Well, not this time. But we often have an outdoor meeting or two during the summer months, and there is an excellent space for one at Leeuwin.

Expect our Vice President Education to respond to requests to petition Peter for such an event in late November or perhaps February. It’s a different experience speaking in the open air.

Daylight saving changes the feeling at the start of meetings now. We don’t need lights for the whole hour and a half from 6-7.30 pm. It gives a bright start to the meeting which carried through.

Claire was Toastmaster.

Claire Lacy

Claire handled the role with great vigour. She is an expert in our standard format for introducing speakers, and at times she could have been introducing the President-Elect of the United States. But her energy was always appropriately tailored to the person and the role she was deferring to.

Glenis gave the Inspiration.

She told us about Lang Lang, the Chinese pianist who was featured in the opening to the Beijing Olympics. His parents suffered a great deal of deprivation during the Cultural Revolution in China, and they were determined to give their one child the best opportunity they could. He was given a piano for his 2nd birthday – that’s right, 2 years old – and started working with a teacher at 4. His parents drove him – you’ve been born with a great gift, but you have to work at it. And work at it he did, practising for 8 or more hours every day.

Colin Simons

Colin presented Table Topics

We are very happy to have Colin back with us. Family commitments with a daughter in Sydney have kept him away for most of this year. He told us the theme for Table Topics would be trees. He was inspired by Alan’s speech last week.

Tony’s question was What kind of a tree are you? It’s a weeping willow, with Tony, as he battles with Database Management at work.
Craig What kind of trees should we have in our gardens? Craig believes our gardens should match what we feel. So everything should fit a theme.
Glenis What advantage is there in having native trees rather than imported species? Glenis wants to preserve our native vegetation for its own sake, and particularly because they need less water and less pruning.
Frank Can we live with logging? Frank couldn’t reach a final conclusion. What we do is meet consumer demand. We want the paper, so we get rid of our native trees, and install plantations. Is that good? Probably not, but it’s what people want.
Gail How do we sustain the growth of our forests? Well, by stopping logging of course, by recycling timber instead of throwing it out, and by growing plantations.
Peta What do you think of airlines charging a voluntary fee for carbon offsets? Peta felt she didn’t know anything about this, so Mark spoke passionately – it’s just a big scam to fatten their own profits.

Gail presented the Tonic about monster fish in the Swan. The sceptics among us were silenced when she presented a newspaper cutting of a sturgeon caught in the Swan and released again. It was 11 foot long and had a 6 foot girth. It was a big fish!

Alan presented the Table Topics Evaluation.

Heljo Cameron

Heljo is back from her world trip, and resuming her quest for her Advanced Communicator Award. She was selling a product with the title Successful Accessories. It was a bag, a Peruvian product with amazing qualities. It can be used for shopping. It’s ideal for personal defence in dangerous situations. It’s an ideal umbrella. And to top it all, it’s an upmarket fashion statement. At less than $40, full price, it’s a bargain, but she offered it, this night only, for $20.

Peta evaluated Heljo.

Colin Hughes

Colin’s Humorously Speaking 3 speech was titled Rocking City Blues.
Colin narrated his experiences in Phoenix with his friend, Manfred. There was a lot of waiting around, and many disappointments. But the plane left on time!

Craig evaluated Colin.

David Nicholas

David’s CC 6 speech was titled Where do you come from?.
David began by clarifying what the question wasn’t about. It wasn’t a young child asking a parent about the facts of life. It couldn’t be answered with a run down of places you have lived in and come from. It asks about your personality. What kind of a person are you? and how did you get to be like that? From the many traits of personality he chose 3. Are we optimists or pessimists? Are we spenders or savers? And how do we handle anger from a close friend or associate? We were asked to look deep into ourselves. What are we like? How did we get to be like that?

Gail evaluated David.

Frank’s Highlights tested our listening skills. He dealt with sturgeons, Lang Lang, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, scepticism about carbon offsets, and the colour of the bargain bag. Alas! there more highlights than time to detail them.
Mark evaluated the evaluators.

Tony, the depressed weeping willow, gave the Timing Report.

Alan Smith

Alan evaluated the meeting.

President Gail closed the meeting. She welcomed Marina back and looked forward to her resuming membership.

She drew attention to the forward Agendas on the back page, and noted that David and Mark would be attending the District 73 Council Meeting in Melbourne this weekend.

Gail prepared the supper.

Here are some highlights

22 people attended, again including Mark’s two sons, Tyler and Callan. As well, Jeremy, a Toastmaster from a few years ago, attended with his workmate, Setare.

Jeremy gave us the Inspiration.

Margaret gave her first speech to the Club – the Tonic.

Mark delivered a Workshop on Vocal Variety. It was mostly for our Speechcrafters, but it was a benefit to everybody.

Ben’s Table Topics picked up the style from Judith’s version of a fortnight before and took us on a challenging date with David’s imaginary niece Nicole.

Tammy deliver her Speechcraft Icebreaker speech on her road to “Motherhood”.

Cathy gave her 4th Speechcraft speech on “The ugly parent syndrome”.

Glenis gave an inspirational CC Speech 10 – “Know your own country” and completed the requirements for our Club’s Outstanding Member award. You can see the complete report for all our members on our Club Awards page

We had another spectacular supper.
It must be the Speechcraft Course which is the underlying cause for Alan’s wonderful choice of food.

Gail was Toastmaster, efficiently unobtrusive in the role, a model for all of us. Gail resumes as Vice President Education from next week, following the time she spent dealing with her mother’s death in Queensland.

Elections
We will be holding our elections for the July to December term on June 11. All members are eligible to stand for the 7 Officer roles. You can see a web page on toastmasterswa.net which explains the importance of our officers generally and details the responsibilities for each role. Go to Club Officers.

Here are some highlights

23 people attended, including Mark’s two sons, Tyler and Callan

John joined and gave the Tonic

Ben gave a passionate Inspiration about a horrible sight on the way to the meeting and how it is inspiring him with his medical studies

Sharmila and Cathy gave their Speechcraft Icebreaker speeches

Craig gave us his CC Speech 4 – the secrets of success, including the big one, underpinning them all

Judith told us a touching story about her friend Michael

Tony threatened us with singing if we didn’t answer his Highlight questions correctly. When we answered them all correctly he started to sing Starry starry night anyway

Congratulations to Pascale
Pascale was there to receive congratulations for being the only WA representative to be placed in the District 73 contests held in Lilydale, Victoria on the weekend of May 16-18.

The supper was spectacular.
Alan bought it and served it up. There was a great variety and plenty of each but there were only a few little bits left at the end.

Elections
We will be holding our elections for the July to December term on June 11. All members are eligible to stand for the 7 Officer roles. You can see a web page on toastmasterswa.net which explains the importance of our officers generally and details the responsibilities for each role. Go to Club Officers.

The Travel Gavel is an award to the club whose members travel the greatest number of kilometres to the Convention. We had 4 members registered at the Convention – Alan Smith, Mark Richards, Claire Lacy and David Nicholas – one more than the next club in WA. There were 2 delegates from Busselton and 1 from Margaret River, but our members took the award.

District Officer of the Year

Alan Smith

Alan Smith is the District Treasurer. Because of the actions of two previous District 73 administrations, World Headquarters imposed draconian reporting requirements on Alan. This involved him in a complete recast of the District Budget which he had already prepared, and often tediously repeated explanations to members and officers who objected to the new rules. He was patient and courteous with them and eventually the new rules were accepted by all, not necessarily happily. No Treasurer before him had this kind of crisis and resulting workload. He turned out to be just the person for the crisis.

Alan will complete the requirements for his second DTM at the end of his term as Treasurer.

The Table Topics Contest and the International Speech Contest

Pascale Amberville-Colby

Claire Lacey

Pascale Amberville-Colby belongs to quite a few Clubs, including Victoria Quay. He is proud of his membership of our club, but in this case he was representing Subiaco Early Birds (one of the clubs we sponsored). Pascale was placed third in the field of 9 Contestants.

Claire Lacy spoke brilliantly, but was not placed in the first three. She was a bit disappointed immediately after the contest, but was reinvigorated by the warm praise she received from many of the spectators, including a great many from outside WA. This was excellent experience for Claire which she will be able to build on in the future.

District Public Relations Officer

Mark Richards District 73 PRO

The top 4 elected officers in the District are the

District Governor – Bernard Marmion from Victoria
Lt Governor Education & Training – Damian Chong from Tasmania
Lt Governor Marketing – Carrol Jones from Victoria
Public Relations Officer – Mark Richards from Victoria Quay in WA

It was a contested election, against a candidate from Melbourne, but Mark won easily after his vigorous election speech. Mark intends to carry out the role with energy and skillful application. When he does he will be the first PRO in at least the last decade to actually make a difference.

You can see from the way he dressed to receive his DTM award that Mark is going to make an impact.

Distinguished Toastmasters

David Nicholas DTM 5 times

Victoria Quay is the pre-eminent club across the District in many ways but the promotion of the DTM Award is where our leadership is most visible. Since we chartered our club in November, 1995, many more DTMs have been awarded to our members than any other club in the District. Last year we initiated the Double DTM award to encourage members across the District first to aspire to, work for and achieve their DTMs, and then to go on working in the organisation to achieve their second and possibly even their third DTM. Currently there are only 4 Toastmasters among the 2,400 members in the District who have at least 2 DTMs and 2 are from Victoria Quay – David Nicholas and Glenis Nicholas. Alan Smith will complete the requirements for his second DTM in July this year.

During the award ceremonies on the Saturday night, David Nicholas was honoured for his fifth DTM and Mark Richards for his first. Glenis Nicholas couldn’t be there to be honoured for her second. In his acceptance speech David urged members present not to regard the DTM as a terminating award, but to take up the challenge to work for Victoria Quay’s Double DTM award. Not suprisingly Mark announced he was going to, and afterwards several other DTMs present told David they had already started on the quest for their second.

You can access a slide show of all the photos by clicking on any one of them. Try it.

Claire Lacy

Claire Lacy from Victoria Quay is the Western Division representative for the District 73 final in Melbourne in May this year.

Claire spoke on “Never let your brain retire”. She opened dramatically with “Beep beep beep beep…..” and then told of the death of Doris at 67, who had given up on life, and whose brain had shrunk. Use it or lose it, she told us dramatically. She followed this with stories of her grandfather who had sunk into depression and was ready to die, but recovered and lived for another happy 10 years. And then there was Doris, at 70 enrolling for another degree at University, energetic and vibrant. It was an excellent International quality speech because Claire applied the lessons of these three people to everybody in the audience – use it or lose it. Never let our brains retire. Live Life!

Claire told Chief Judge Mike Helm that she had been a member of Toastmasters for just 12 months. She was very grateful for the opportunities she had received at Victoria Quay, and particularly for the intense coaching for this speech she had received from Glenis and David Nicholas.

Judith Allan

Mark Richards

Two Contests were held – the International and the Evaluation. The Contests were hosted by Swan and Morning Star and held in the Midland Community Centre. The whole afternoon was brilliantly organised by W16 Area Governor Judith Allen on behalf of Western Division Governor Mark Richards.

Introducing the Contests Mark told us of the great success Western Division is enjoying this year. We have 4 new Clubs so far – WA Governors, Touch of Gold in Kalgoorlie, Cannington Communicators and Canning Vale. As well two Western Division Clubs are among the top 3 in the Distinguished Club Program in District 73 – Victoria Quay and Gateway. He urged us to keep up the good work and to enjoy the contests.

The Evaluation Results

Tania Park Evaluation 1st

Charles Fisher Evaluation 2nd

First was the Evaluation Contest with test speaker Wayne Brown. It was won by Tania Park from Jetty and second was Charles Fisher from Western Founders.

The International Results

Claire Lacey International 1st

James Park International 2nd

After the break for afternoon tea we enjoyed the International. First of course was Claire Lacey from Victoria Quay and second James Park from Jetty.

We started our speechcraft course last night. It was a great success.

There are 6 Speechcrafters – Glen, Yvonne, Diane, Colin, Marina and Saras.

Alan is the Coordinator and he was the Toastmaster for the night. He had help from Victoria Quay members David, Glenis, Judith and Mark and Gateway member Jeanette.

Glenis organised a sumptuous supper.

The meeting flowed smoothly and the Speechcrafters responded with great enthusiasm. At the end of the meeting in a feedback session Glen said how different it was for him to be at a training session which didn’t rely on handouts and Powerpoint presentations, but instead involved him directly in the action.

Glenis, Mark and Jeanette are not available next Monday night, so we would appreciate a few more helpers to come along and take a role. Speak to Alan or David if you can come.