The Blarney Toastmasters Club Cork
The Blarney Toastmasters Club Cork invites you to spend a friendly evening of fun and education with us at the Blarney Woollen Mills Hotel every second Tuesday with a great group of people. The mission of a Toastmasters Club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth. There are over one hundred sixty clubs between Britain and Ireland with Toastmasters International being one of the largest non-profit organisations in the whole world.
Since its foundation in 1975 Blarney Toastmasters has being going strong here in Cork. By joining a Toastmasters club you will improve in your work within two years. Along with that you will learn how to chair meetings, improve standards of listening, thinking and speaking and meet a full cross section of the community in which you live. It is all about doing it. If you apply yourself by preparing carefully, actvely participating and speaking as often as possibe you will be amazed at how quickly your communication and leadership skills will improve in a fun and friendly environment.
At an average Blarney Toastmasters meeting of twenty five people our President opens the evening at eight o'clock and passes control to the Toastmaster of the night. At each meeting a different member gets a shot at this and all the other jobs. The Toastmaster welcomes all the members and guests before introducing the agenda for the evening. After this the Topicsmasters gets up and asks members to speak on a subject for two minutes unprepared. An example of this would be "If you were to be stranded on a deserted island what five items would you bring with you if you were only allowed five?" Guests are always free to join in but are never compelled to. Then we break for coffee.
When we come back we have generally three prepared presentations given by our Blarney club members. The Toastmaster introduces each speaker. The subject matter can be on anything under the sun but since we follow educational programs there must be a definite emphesis. These include preparing a talk that allows the speaker use to body gestures in particular or vocal variety, organisation, persuasion skills, interpersonal relations, storytelling, etc. The speeches are usually around seven minutes long.
When all the speakers are finished up comes the General Evaluator. This person leads the evaluation section of the evening. The General Evaluator calls the evaluators to evaluate their preassigned speakers. Here the evaluator gives his or her overall impression of the speech, in what ways the talk met the stage objectives and maybe one or two ways in which the speaker may improve. Then the General Evaluator calls on the Topics Evaluator, the Timekeeper and the Grammarian to give their reports. Finally the General Evaluator gives his or her own personal opinions on the meeting as a whole before giving out prizes for the best contributions during the evening. When all this is done the General Evaluator passes control of the meeting back to the Toastmaster who in turn gives it on the the President. The President then closes the meeting at around ten o'clock and some of us retire to Christy's bar at the Blarney Woollen Mills Hotel, Cork, off solving the real problems of the world!
All meetings begin at 7.45pm for 8pm and are generally held every second Tuesday (bar the summer). We hope to see you there.
