Interested in Toastmasters? Come to Cleveland County Communicators open house
People wanting to brush up on their public speaking and leadership skills will soon have fresh opportunities.
The Toastmasters Club has recently been resurrected in Shelby and an open house will be held in March.
Karen Buckwalter, who said she was active in a club in Spartanburg, SC, and served as the vice president of public relations of Speaking Out at the Y Toastmasters Club, wanted to join a local club when she moved to Shelby but after doing some research, she discovered it had folded during COVID.
Buckwalter said she started gauging interest in reviving it and began collecting names on a spreadsheet. After contacting other clubs for tips on establishing a chapter, the Cleveland County Communicators was revived.
The next step was finding a place to meet. Buckwalter said the YMCA has a history of partnering with Toastmasters because the founder was an executive director of a YMCA, and the club typically meets early in the morning, so she reached out to the Dover YMCA and was able to secure the board room for weekly meetings there.
The open house will be held at the Dover YMCA, located at 411 Cherryville Road, Thursday, March 7, from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. The meetings will be held weekly going forward at the same time on Thursdays.
Buckwalter said the open house will give people a chance to get a feel for a Toastmaster meeting and will be an opportunity to ask questions.
“It’s a very structured agenda down to the minute,” she said. “There’s an opening and usually an educational or inspirational moment by the club president. At the open house, one person will be giving a prepared speech.”
She said the speech will be seven minutes long, and the speaker is an experienced, award-winning Toastmaster and will be using storytelling elements.
“I think people will be very impressed when they hear the speech,” she said.
Those speeches will then be evaluated by someone whose specific role is to evaluate speeches.
Following the speeches are table topics, which allows people to practice brief, spontaneous speaking on a variety of topics.
“Then there's an evaluation of the overall meeting and closing,” she said.
Buckwalter said Toastmasters offers the rare opportunity to receive immediate and valuable feedback.
She said she first discovered Toastmasters through MeetUp, a social media platform for hosting gatherings and events, and was blown away when she heard the first speaker.
“Toastmaster develops public speaking but also leadership skills,” Buckwalter said. “There's different tracks that people choose.”
She said people can focus on mastering presentations, or if they’re a team leader, they can learn how to motivate and inspire employees. People can learn how to present themselves in interviews or business owners can polish their elevator speech and what they do and why.
Buckwalter said in the age of social media, learning to speak quickly and persuasively is a valuable skill.
She said they have had members who were pastors, CEOs, directors of nonprofits, fundraisers, teachers, retirees and more.
“It's just all kinds of possibilities,” she said.
Buckwalter said they are hoping to draw in some younger people from the high schools and Gardner-Webb University to offer them practice with speaking and social skills.
“We’re welcoming former members so please come back if you were involved,” she said.
For more information, attend the open house or email Karen Buckwalter at karen@karendoylebuckwalter.com.
This article originally appeared on The Shelby Star: Interested in Toastmasters? Check out this local open house
