Toastmasters Gent

The goal of Toastmasters is to improve our public speaking and develop our leadership skills. In Ghent we try to create a fun and comfortable setting to do this. Toastmasters Gent is a bilingual club (Dutch/English). Every member can choose in which language he or she will speak, so our meetings are also a good opportunity to practise your languages.

If you are interested in Toastmasters, you are very welcome to join us at the next meeting. More info can be found in the about section.

Leadership skills are essential to get things done, be it at our work, in our communities or in our families. In Toastmasters, we learn about leadership skills every day: when we take a role to support our Club’s meetings, when we encourage fellow members and when we step up to take a role in the Club’s committee.

On January 19th, 2013, Toastmasters Belgium organizes for its second time, a day-long Toastmasters Leadership Institute to help develop your leadership skills. Both Toastmasters and non-Toastmasters are welcome. Parallel sessions are offered to fulfill the needs of all participants.

This event is hosted by Toastmasters Gent. You can find more information on the event website.

In Toastmasters clubs are given a set of 10 goals each year. These include communication goals (CC, ACB, …), leadership goals (CL, ALB, …), membership goals, … When a club has reached 5 of the 10 goals the club is called a ‘distinguished club’. Starting from 7 goals the club is ‘select distinguished’. The highest recognition is ‘president distinguished’ and is obtained when you reach 9 goals.

In November 2012 we reached to 5th goal so for the 2012-2013 year we can call ourselves Distinguished Club. We want to thank all our member who made this possible! We want to reach before summer 2013 the President Distinguished club status so keep on giving speeches and fulfilling roles on the meeting so we can reach that level for the third consecutive time!

The contests for this fall are coming up, so it’s the perfect occasion to see some excellent speeches!

On the 13th of October we’ll have the Ghent Contest. Both prepared speeches as improved speeches (table topics) will be performed. Everybody is welcome to check it out. Contact us if you are not familiar with Toastmasters and we will give you some more information.

On the 22nd the Area Contest will take place. The 2 best contestants of the Antwerp, Ghent, Berlaymont and Atomium Contest will compete! This will take place in Antwerp. Contact us if you want to come along.

On the 27th of October we’ll have another regular Club Meeting.

Please save the date for the Division Contest in Luxembourg (12/11) and the District Conference in Basel (26/11). These are the next levels in the competitions and definitely worth visiting!

Kind regards,
Toastmasters Gent

09/10/2011

This weekend we had our very first Toastmasters Gent weekend, filled with a lot of speeches, educationals, workshops and of course a lot of fun. As can be seen on the happy faces on the group picture, the weekend has been a tremendous succes! Many thanks to all participants to make this weekend a milestone in our Toastmasters Gent history.

We will have tree meetings in september, following the tradition to do a ‘special’ meeting when there is a fifth Thursday.

September 8th: Regular meeting at Vlerick

September 22th: Regular meeting at Vlerick

September 29th: Special meeting, details to be announced! But rumour has it that it will involve an educational, beertasting and a lot of fun…

Feel free to join us and have a taste of Toastmasters Gent!

Since communicating is not only done verbally during speeches, we set up a twitter account to be in touch with you! Feel free to follow us at http://twitter.com/tm_gent

The Area B Fall Contest/Conference (Humorous speaking and Table Topics) will take place on 22 October in Antwerp.

The Division B Fall Contest/Conference is hosted by a club in Luxembourg (12 November 2011).

District 59 Fall Contest/Conference is in Basle, Switzerland (26 and 27 November).

30/07/2011

The long-awaited schedule for this summer:

Thursday 14/07: Debating eveving. Practise for the contest against TM Blackforest.
Wednesday 20/07: We visit the “Gentse Feesten”.
Thursday 28/07: Debating contest against TM Blackforest (in Brussels, the HUB).

In August we’ll have meetings on the follow dates (more info soon):
11/08
25/08

After the meeting last thursday the new Toastmasters Gent Officers have officially taken over the responsability of the previous team. A big step for our young club. Everybody feels confident they will do an excellent job at making the coming toastmasters year unforgettable.

The date/time of the next Division Contest was also announced. It will take place in Luxembourg on Saturday, 12 November 2011.

25/06/2011