Galway Toastmasters are back - with new Pathways, triple-crowns and award winners!

Galway Toastmasters held the first meeting of the 2018/19 season this week and if it was anything to go by, we are in for a great year‼‼

We had a very interesting Topics session from Margaret. The topics involved the names of cities and a ‘trigger’ word to be included e.g. ‘Athens’ and ‘Greek Mythology’. The topic on ‘Galway’ and ‘The Aran Islands’ proved particularly appealing, with many guests opting to give an add-on! It was wonderful to see familiar faces after the summer break and fantastic to see so many guests at the meeting. We were greeted by the Sergent-at-Arms Frances. Sarah, our new President, opened the meeting with a warm welcome, and she encouraged us to write down one goal for Toastmasters this year, and handed the meeting over to Brian, our Toastmaster for the evening. 

With all the officers for the evening introduced, we then had our first prepared speech of the season.  Pat gave an excellent overview of the new Pathways programme and took us through ‘Pat’s Happy Path’. This was a very timely speech, to give both members and guests an overview of how the process of Toastmasters works and what to expect from Pathways. 

Pat C. gave the second speech of the evening entitled ‘Giving an Award’. This gave the opportunity to present Sarah with a ‘Triple Crown’ for having achieved Competent Communicator, Competent Leader and Advanced Leadership Bronze awards in the past year. We also managed to surprise Sarah by presenting her with the Toastmaster of the Year Award too.

Following the tea break, we had the evaluation part of the meeting, with an evaluation from Margaret. We had a lovely Creative Corner given by Marie, about affirmation cards which ended the meeting on a particularly positive note. 

Galway Toastmasters next meeting is on September  12th at 8:30pm in the Menlo Park Hotel. All are welcome and we hope to see you there.