Hakuna Matata at Croydon Communicators

written by dan magill

Club President Croydon Communicators

We had another evening filled with education, inspiration and cake at Croydon Communicators on Thursday evening.
 
Our Queen of the Jungle

Our Toastmaster for the night was the inimitable Caroline Rainford and from the moment she stepped onto stage, with her theme, Hakuna Matata, our worries disappeared, and we knew we were in for a great couple of hours.
 
Hot on the heels of giving his icebreaker speech at our last meeting, Andrei took on the role of timekeeper this time around and his frequent, yet well-justified bell ringing showed that he as quickly developed the confidence to make sure members stay in line when it comes to time!
 
Kevin gave us a very Lion King appropriate word of the day, ‘Nurture’ and Estela led a fantastically innovative warm-up session which had us all parading around the room, chatting and stretching out like we were kings of the jungle!
 
Let Us Eat Cake

Then, we got into our prepared speeches.
 
Our guest, Sergey from London Victorians spoke to us about the importance of body language before Gina stepped onto stage holding a chocolate cake which left us all wondering who would be top of the food chain and get the first slice.
 
Gina spoke to us about her High-Performance Leadership Project which she is about to embark on and brilliantly used her cake as a metaphor for how she intends to carry out the project. It’s always feels nicer when metaphors are edible!
 
Our final prepared speaker was Estela. Estela arrived at the meeting expecting to only be giving the warm-up but when one of our speakers couldn’t make it, she bravely stepped in to deliver her ice-breaker speech for a second time.
 
Estela gave the same speech she'd given just a few weeks ago, but this time looking so much more confident and relaxed on stage. It’s a real testament to how quickly the process can work at Toastmasters – and how much effort and time Estela is putting into her speaking.
 
 Afia, Richard and Matt evaluated the three speeches. It was great to see Matt giving his first Toastmasters’ evaluation and all three evaluators provided invaluable feedback for our speakers.
 
Topics Masters

After the break, and the delicious cake, we regrouped for our impromptu speaking session. Rob posed some thought-provoking questions to our speakers and it was inspiring to have our first-time guest, Steven, come up to give the very first table topic of the evening.
 
We rounded things off with an invaluable and detailed general evaluation from our VPE, Aseem, before presenting awards and heading home feeling relaxed and worry-free.
 
Wonderful Wilkie

Special congratulations need to also go to Rob, who became the first member of the club to complete Level 3 of his Pathway. Well done, Rob!
 
Awards
 
Best Speaker – Estela
Best Evaluator – Richard
Best Table Topics – Amit
President’s Award – Steven