Diversity, Learning, and Empowerment

Diversity, Learning, and Empowerment

At McGill Toastmasters, we have three club values: Diversity, Learning, and Empowerment.

In the past two decades, McGill Toastmasters has been receiving members and guests including students from McGill University and people from different walks of life. Many members speak two or more languages and desire to improve their public speaking and communication in English. Since the pandemic, the virtual meeting has brought more diversity to our membership, and we have remote members from other provinces of Canada and other countries. In today’s meeting, a new member Anelisa who speaks 4 languages talked about her language personality in her icebreaker speech. I really like the quote she used to conclude her speech, “Those who know many languages live as many lives as the languages they know”. I think many of our members could relate to it.

In each meeting, we dive into a meeting theme, and today’s theme is “How to spot a liar”. We had a fun table topics session and a prepared speech that are related to the meeting theme. If your partner asks you “Honey, do you think I put on weight?”, how would you respond? This is one of the table topics questions that was asked during the improvisation session. Our intelligent speaker Rene shared on the spot that he would love his partner as he is and help him with the workout. Our guest Alex has a smart answer “The weight was put in all the right places, Honey”. Our speaker Ivan talked about how to identify deceptions, and he effectively used body language and facial expression to convey the message. In every meeting, we learn useful information, different aspects of a topic, useful techniques, and constructive feedback from other members.

After the meeting, all four guests expressed they want to come back and become a member of the club as they felt welcomed, inspired, and empowered in the meeting. That’s why our members persistently attend the meeting and invest in their Toastmasters journey.

If you have read this far to learn about our club values, why not join our meeting to see the diversity, do the learning, and feel the empowerment?