My Toastmasters Experience

It stands to reason that every large organization must have some kind of Ethics Committee... with someone as the District's Chief Disciplinarian. It's not a well publicized committee too... after all, if you are called by said committee, I can imagine that it can be worrisome to said individual wondering why they are being called by the committee head. On the otehr side of the coin you'd want to know that there is a person whom you can talk to should you want to - or need to discuss sensitive matters that may tarnish the image and name of Tostmasters.

This actually happened as part of my rsponsibilities as Division N Director - yet was not spcific to Division N in particular.... but to the District's future. So I separate it here. Otherwise, this could easily be a Division N - part 5 entry... but it isn't. It deserves a spearate entry. I will tread lightly with this entry. You see, what we discussed, who said what, who sided where... all these may need be kept in confidence. Yet I must point out a few things, being how important this activity was - and for what purose. Simply put, Toastmasters International noticed how several Districts were floundering. Whether it was because of bad economies in the U.S. under a Trump Presidnecy (or despite it), or other global activities weakening economies, the global membership was weakening. We could probably point to the increas of membership fees from $45 to $60. It may not sound much to others, but to other parts of the globe (like us) we also need to tackle exchange rate issues (a...

Focusing on the Division... I did say we were trying to build a community. For our members to realize that there is life in Toatmasters beyond their respective clubs. This meant that with every club visit, we aould invite other members to club hop - experience how other clubs did their meetings, maybe laern from these as well. I would always say that one role of eahc Area Director - who would visit clubs under them, would be to help the clubs where they needed it... but to also see aht other clubs did well, and share the practice. However, it would still be great for members to experience this first hand, and not just as a suggestion by their Area Director. Learning would happen faster too - and yes, they could help out in sharing the meeting roles - specially the technical evaluations (Ah-counter, Timer, Grammarain). We started getting some traction here when we would see some clubs visiting other clubs - more so as invited evaluators. For example, the Club President of ING showed ...

Honestly, I didn't mean for this to go three parts (editor's note: it went to four) - it's just that there were a lot to process. Guess it helped that it was most recent, and had a lot of pictures. Moving on... Given our early successes, you'd think that this Toastmasters year would be one great one. In a sense, it was... after all, we were also celebrating the Centenial celebration of Toastmasters, so there was a vibe of making sure we would commemorate the Centenial. But before that happened, we needed to converge in Cebu to be part of the District's turnover ceremonies. Since Jot Chiongbian was based in Cebu, the turnover naturally happened to be organized there. Advantage here was that plane fare and hotel accomodations were covered by the District - me being part of the District Committee (as all Division Directors are). We basically had a two day celebration - arrival day until dinner, and breakfast the next day. We were not just going on a vacation though ...

As I said before, we were having difficulty finding Toastmasters who could be tapped to serve Division N. The reason behind it? Several, actually. For one, some names were being floated as possible Division Director before me - but there was a reluctance to tackle the role. I don't know what their previous exposure to the Division Council looked like - at least to those who were already past Area Directors... but they seemed reluctant to jump into the leadership role. Some made competing as an excuse... possibly legitimate, but it showed a lack of wanting to sacrifice for the sake of the division. Still, we couldn't fault them. Another possible candidate actually had plans to tranfer to Canada,. We couldn't exactly fault the person - I just wished we knew more about this plan earlier, more so since we tapped her as part of the Division Council. The other problem? Our clubs had their own worlds... theri Toastmasters experiences did not go beyond the borders of the clubs....