Crooked politicians - a humorous table topic

Greetings toastmasters,

Recently I've made a humorous table topic that seemed to worked pretty well in our club, so here I am sharing the idea with the world (-:

Every volunteer had a task of impersonating a crooked politician - in a humorous "tongue-in-cheek" way of course, nothing too political (which would be against the rules). The volunteer had a task that sounded like this: "You are a politician that did something very unethical or sometimes even criminal (explanation of the deed included). Now that new elections are coming how would you explain yourself to public to clean your name?"

The task had really made the volunteers to make an effort to think. And also as you can probably imagine some of the excuses our "guilty politicians" were making were hilarious (-: , so the table topic was both interesting and funny.

To share some fun here's a little teaser video:

There were seven tasks written in total, and I'm sharing the task texts here so you could use it in your club if you want to, or make your own based on those:

Lemberg Toastmasters info sheets online

Here are some informational materials for Lemberg Toastmasters that should answer most of the questions about the Club that outside people might have.

They are waiting for your IceBreakers

These orphan cups are looking for a new owners. They are waiting for your IceBreakers - don't disappoint them ;-)

Lemberg Toastmasters statistics for first half-year of 2012

Lemberg Toastmasters

First half-year of 2012 statistics

19 meetings 

(19/6 ~= 3.17 per month)

21 prepared speeches by 12 speakers

(~1.1 per meeting, 3.5 per month, ~1.75 per speaker)

26 people were taking roles

Thank you all so much!

153 total roles participations

Including prepared speakers 

(~8 roles per meeting, ~5.88 participations by one person for half-year or ~1 per month)

14 viewpoints, 12 table topics, 3 games and one debate

Visiting Lemberg toastmasters for one month you'd go to roughly 3 meetings, hear 4 different speeches, participate in around 2 viewpoints and 2 table topics, and take a role once.All in all this was a productive half-year!

Notable standouts
- Top Speaker - Orest Chopko with 5 speeches!
Noone else delivered more than 2 speeches
- Top Speech Evaluator - Alex Sheremet with 7 speech evaluations!
Noone else did more than 3

Ok, let’s get into the details...

The Club Experience

Toastmasters International published a nice video about the club experience, with explanations and comments.

Lovely.

Lemberg Toastmasters 5-th Anniversary Party Report

Lemberg Toastmasters 5-th Anniversary Party Report

by Yustyna Holubets

Dear Toastmasters!

I am very happy to report that on February 8th the anniversary of Lemberg Toastmasters took place!
Luxurious place, delicate dishes and lovely music perfectly amplified our energy for various exciting activities.

There were two Holiday Table Topics during which volunteer speakers shared their wishes and painted by words different positive emotions. The winners, Lyuba Lazarenko and Alex Bair, got sweet presents.

Also during games guessing child photos and secrets we had an opportunity to discover some less known facts of our club members’ life and also find out how they looked long before becoming toastmasters. World music and quotations guessing games added an exciting intriguing spirit.

And true zest of the evening became “The Talent Show”. During the evening we mentioned outstanding abilities of our members:

• Mykola Makhin who made a statistics of members’ progress with diagrams and tables.
• Alex Bair who is keen on doing amazing sites about cinema.
• Alex Sheremet who is good at handmade art doing original and practical things.
• Andriy Turak who has a definite talent in drama playing.
• Also we enjoyed the performances and demonstrations of the following talents.
• Lyuba Lazarenko presented a splendid singing number taking us to “Marilyn Monroe” world.

• Igor Klyuka revealed his deep interest in Asian cultures showing us his origami skills.
• Olena Derzko provided a desert for the party having cooked her wonderful eclers. 
• Oles Semenyuk made us burst from laugh by presenting his humorous stories.

• Yustyna Holubets introduced a mysterious Orient with her Indian and Arabic dances.

I would like to thank every participant for coming, for your holiday mood and active participation!
Special thanks to:

• Victor Medvedyev for organization and support of the event.
• Lyuba Lazarenko for arranging the place and menu.
• Mykola Makhin for technical support and for being a prefect DJ.
• Alex Sheremet for managing contest prizes.
• Sviatoslav Zalizschuk for sharing his notebook.
• Olenka Derzko for bringing perfect dance music.
• Kostya Pylypchuk for being our “Fashion Hunter”.
• Andriy Turak, our devoted President, who did come to celebration in spite of breaking his leg.

And all others who did send the photos and secrets!

Update:
See more photos from the Anniversary below

...to help you break the ice - a prize for delivering an Ice Breaker

"Come to the dark side!.. We have cookies :-)"

// reportedly a motivational phrase by Darth Vader

The Ice Breaker is what a first speech of a Toastmasters Club member is called. As someone once said, a journey of thousand miles begins with a step, and in Toastmasters Club this step is an Ice Breaker speech. And as it is the first - it is the hardest one.

Our conscious mind and logic tell us that since one becomes a member of a Toastmasters Club he should waste no time and start delivering the speeches, but our subconscious mind often has different opinion. Knowing that we're about to go on a many miles journey we will most certainly hesitate to make a first step, even though it seems to be an easy step to do on it's own. Similar things happen to new members as they are about to deliver their Ice Breakers - there's always some fear or uncertainty in our subconsciousness that causes procrastination and evasion, while our conscious mind just makes up excuses like "I think I'm not prepared enough yet" etc. Life is full of situations like this, I believe everyone at certain times in their lives have to struggle with themselves to overcome this kind of "invisible barrier".

But, as often mentioned, Toastmasters Club is a positive and mutually supportive environment. And now as a part of this support we are introducing a new thing that should really help you on getting extra motivation for delivering an Ice Breaker and getting your subconsciousness to become eager to deliver it - a prize! A prize for delivering an Ice Breaker.

The prize itself isn't something extra fancy, yet we believe it is just the right thing to have an effect on your subconscious mind - this nice cup with Toastmasters International logo:

click to see bigger picture

Looks good, doesn't it? Want one? Than stop hesitating and deliver that Ice Breaker! :-)