Toastmaster Experience

Toastmasters International empowers people to achieve their full potential and realize their dreams. Through our member clubs, people throughout the world can improve their communication and leadership skills, giving them the courage to change.

Toastmasters International is a worldwide, non-profit, educational organization devoted to developing people's public and interpersonal communication and leadership skills. The first Toastmasters club was started at the YMCA in Santa Ana, California, by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley in 1924. Since then, nearly 4 million men and women have enjoyed the benefits of Toastmasters membership. The organization currently has approximately 175,000 members in 8,800 Toastmasters clubs in 70 countries.

In Taiwan, the first Toastmasters club (Taipei Toastmasters club) was established in 1958. The governing body of Toastmasters on Taiwan is the 67P(Provisional District 67) of Toastmasters International located in Taipei. Over the last 43 years, we have more than 71 clubs island-wide.

The Toastmasters Experience takes place in a Club. A typical Toastmasters Club is made up of 20-30 people who usually meet once a week. Many different clubs meets at many different times ranging from early morning meetings to noon hour or evening meetings. Lasting on average two hours, at a Toastmaster meeting you can expect:

• An education session called "Table Topics", that gives members the opportunity to participate in impromptu speaking.
• Prepared speeches, based on projects from the Communication and Leadership manuals, from several of the Club members.
• An evaluation session, during which each speaker is provided with valuable feedback regarding the strengths of the speech, and provided with information that will assist the speaker in problem areas.
• A critique of the evaluations, and of the meeting as a whole, by a general evaluator.

Besides speaking, each member will also have the opportunity to take on one of the various meeting duties. Members can serve as Toastmaster, Topicmaster, Evaluator, General Evaluator, etc. All members are given the chance to serve in these roles.