Toastmasters meets Rotary

Toastmasters International were a prominent participant at the Rotary International Convention in Hamburg, Germany, last year and an appeal was made there for closer co-operation between the two organisations.
     This was carries through at club level when New Dawn invited Lorna Wridgway from the Sage Toastmasters Club in Johannesburg as a speaker.

Lorna Wridgway explaining the structure of talking Toastmasters while David Marshall acts as a human easel

     It was a bustling meeting with 34 people in attendance, one of the biggest turnouts ever at a regular meeting. There were 12 guests in total although two, namely Joan Sainsbury and Audrey Gatawa, will soon be inducted into the club. Well done, everyone.
     Lorna told us that Toastmasters was founded in 1924 and has 358 000 members in 16 800 clubs in 143 countries all over the world.

Lorna Wridgway 

     The organisation is a US headquartered nonprofit educational organisation for the purpose of promoting communication, public speaking and leadership skills, in the words of Wikipedia.
     In this regard she quoted Donald McGannon (1920 - 1984), an American broadcasting executive, on leadership: Leadership is action, not position.
     Lorna stressed the many commonalities between Rotary and Toastmasters.

Joan and Graham Donet, Tony Reddy and I listening to the Toastmasters story

     She said she joined the organisation in 2018 for personal and professional development and to be able to take part in humanitarian work.
     Their club, the Sages Toastmasters club, meets at the Marks Park Sports Bar at 6.30 every first and third Thursday of the month. The Sages club has 12 members at present. The club was established in 1987 and is one of the oldest in Johannesburg.

PDG Jankees Sligcher on his throne

     After a visit to the Leeuwkop prison the previous week, PDG Jankees Sligcher found himself in the poo last week (it usually happens the other way round!) during a visit to Cosmo City with the Donate-a-Loo crowd.
     Helene Bramwell says they were approached by a donor from Seeds of Africa who wanted two toilets each erected at two nursery schools in the township on the way to the Lanseria Airport.

Inspecting the toilets and their operating system

     The toilets have now been installed to great excitement from the children. Jankees and President Judy accompanied Helene, Adele Dabbs and Bronwyn Tucker to the schools where the children are being taught how to use and how to look after the toilets.
     As mentioned in the blog last week, the speaker on Wednesday will be Sue Cock, wife of the conductor Richard Cock.

Sue Cock

     Sue and Ian Widdop are planning a fundraiser concert featuring Gabriel Faure's Requiem at St. Martin's-in-the-Veld in Rosebank in May and will be telling us a bit more about her plans. Apparently she'll be playing an excerpt from the piece at the meeting.
     The meeting on 26 February will be devoted to discussing our various projects.
     I'm signing off from the blog until the middle of March, as we're going to Cape Town for a holiday for the next three weeks. Graham Donet will do the blog in my absence.
     A Thought for the Week: Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. - Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)