18th January 2023 - Prince Harry, Community & Story-telling

Timing: Meeting started on time 

Attendance: Excellent turnout, a lot of guests.

Opening: Jenny opened the meeting in absence of president Pat.

Table Topics: Frances ran a lively table topics session with questions such as:

• What would you do if you were in control?
• Do you set goals?
• Other topics concerned: meeting points, escape rooms, prince Harry’s new book, holding onto old belongings & favorite things about toastmasters.
• The last topic gave rise to the theme of community, which shun through the night. Specifically the warm, friendly and supportive community at the club.

Speech 1. Kathy - Pathways: Presentation Mastery (L1) Ice Breaker 

Project Title: Ready for anything

• Kathy, through very impressive dramatization and confident expression, engaged everyone in her speech. She excelled in her ability to tell a range of stories and bring it all full circle for a relevant and poignant ending

Speech 2. Michael - Pathways: Presentation Mastery (L1) Ice Breaker 

Project Title: 40 years working in Galway

• Michael brought everyone on a journey with many laughs and much insight into how our society has changed over the last 40 years. It gave everyone a glimpse into humanity from a different lens, his lens, where we could get to know his experience and in doing so see the world we live in differently.

Speech 3. Brian - Pathways: Innovative Planning (L1) Ice Breaker 

Project Title: “Be Kind”

• Brian gave an extremely engaging and relatable speech. In his humorous yet honest way he delivered a poignant message on self-compassion.

Evaluation of Speech 1: Aisling praised Kathy’s confidence, vocal variety & storytelling.

Evaluation of Speech 2: Mark acknowledged Michael’s natural speaking ability, great humor, use of props and vocal variety. He appraised the use of the aforementioned to deliver an insightful speech on the social history of Galway. 

Evaluation of Speech 3: Cormac appraised Brian’s speech highly, specifically his excellent use of body language. He gave some advanced tips on body language.

Creative Corner: 

Mona began the creative corner with a beautiful poem that demonstrated some shared hardships between elders and the youth. This set the scene for Mona’s passionate message about a societal problem she cares a lot about, loneliness amongst elders and how we can all help. She hit the message home in a moving way by reciting a poem on grief from an elderly lady she worked with through the charity “Alone”.

Ah Counter Report. Stephen gave a comprehensive and thorough report on the use of Ahh, Umm, and other common crutch words throughout the evening.

Grammarian Report. Brian's Word of the day was Defenestrate, which was used three times. Brian brought attention to lovely phrases that arose throughout the night.

General Evaluator’s Report. Maria appraised the meeting on its successes. She gave lovely comments on the creative corner & the theme that emerged of the special community at our club.

Meeting Close.

Jenny closed the meeting, by acknowledging how great it was to see the amount of “first timers” we saw taking on new roles and ice breaker speeches.