Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization dedicated to the concept of people helping people become more proficient in public speaking. Through Toastmasters individuals learn to speak effectively, conduct productive meetings, manage a department or business, lead, delegate, and motivate.
The first Toastmasters club was established on October 22, 1924, in Santa Ana, California, by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley, who conceived and developed the idea of helping others to speak more effectively. Today there are over 12,000 Toastmasters clubs around the world in more than 106 countries. You can find out more about Toastmasters at the web site: http://www.toastmasters.org.
Our club, the Forward Thinkers, was formed in May of 2003 and over the years has helped hundreds of residents of Sherwood Park and neighboring communities improve their business skills. As a non-profit organization, your membership dues go towards your training materials, a monthly Toastmasters magazine, and the general operation of our club.
Community Benefits
Toastmasters has helped many members in their community service activities. Using the speaking and leadership skills developed in Toastmasters, people have become more active in business, churches, and service and charity organizations. Toastmasters members are able to organize activities, conduct meetings, and speak in public as their organization's representative. Some even become active in local, provincial, or national government.
Company Benefits
A company's success also depends on communication. Employees face an endless exchange of ideas, messages, and information as they deal with one another and with customers day after day. How well they communicate can determine whether a company quickly grows into an industry leader or joins thousands of other businesses mired in mediocrity.
Toastmasters provides the tools that enable employees to become effective communicators and leaders. Toastmasters training helps employees:
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Toastmasters produces results. Around the world more than three million men and women of all ages and occupations have benefited from Toastmasters training, and more than one thousand corporations, community groups, universities, associations, and government agencies now use Toastmasters training.
Toastmasters is a self-paced learning program in which you learn by doing. Other members of the club will evaluate your presentations, giving you feedback on what you did well and what you could do better. From this feedback, you will learn how to give better presentations and by working through the speech exercises you will get practice at presenting. You may join at any time and you progress through the program at a pace that is comfortable for you.
You can join a Toastmasters club at any time during the year as the training is self-paced and you can attend as long as you feel you are getting value out of it… a number of our members have been with the club for several years as they feel they continue to learn and develop. Our club offers convenient, lunch hour meetings and our meetings are a lot of fun, as well as educational.
Guests are always welcome to our weekly meetings, so why not drop by and see if Toastmasters is right for you?
