A milestone of 100 meetings marked

A milestone

The Shin-Osaka Leaders Toastmasters Club marked a significant milestone of 100 meetings on October 1, 2024.

The club started its activities on August 7, 2019, when five founders had their kick-off meeting at a meeting room of KOKO PLAZA. They decided on things like:

1. Day and time of the regular meetings (The first and thrid Tuesdays of the month, which later was expanded to the first, thrid, and fifth Tuesdays)

2. Name of the club

3. Club officers (Hideo as President, C.J. Marks as Vice President Education (VPE), Toshimi as Vice President Membership (VPM), Maho as Vice President Public Relations (VPPR) and Sergeant-at-Arms (SaA), and Seiji as Secretary and Treasurer. Unfortunately, Toshimi ahd Seiji have left the club.)

4. The first demonstration meeting on October 8, 2019

5. Club membership dues (9,000 yen for a six-month renewal period)

6. Public Relations channels (Originally, the website, Facebook Page, Meetup, and Twitter. We later added Instagram, Kokuchi Pro, and YouTube.)

We held our first demonstration meeting with helpers form our sponsor club, the Nishinomiya TGIF Toastmasters Club, and some guests. Though it was named a "demonstration" meeting, the content was no different from a regular Toastmasters meeting. We wanted to have a meeting for the members to practice our public speaking skills rather than focus on recruiting members. The philosophy was like-minded people should be able to see the benefit of Toastmasters and Shin-Osaka Leaders if we keep having meaningful meetings for ourselves. In short, if we show them the real meeting, it should sell itself.

We also took this approach because we wanted to gather members gradually so that early adopters should be able to help newer members withhout solely relying on the founders. This bore fruit when we entered into our second program year in July 2020, when we reshuffled the club officers. President Hideo and Treasurer Seiji stayed in their positions but we invited early adopters, Ame and Fristy as Secretary and Seargeant-at-Arms, respectively. As C.J. Marks assumed presidency at the Nishinomiya TGIF Toastmassters Club, Maho took over as VPE. Toshimi took over as VPPR while Seiji took over as VPM.

Fast forward seven months, we finally gathered 20 members, which is the requirement for a prospective club to be officially recognized as a Toastmasters club, in January 2021. It took us longer than expected, due partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it had been a rewarding journey. While waiting for our charter application was being processed, we held another demonstration meeting and a speech competition before we held our first regular meeting on March 2, 2021.

A lot has changed, a lot have left, and a lot have joined after that and on October 1, 2024, we celebrated our 100th regular meeting with a lot more diverse, more proficient, and equally enthusiastic members. When the club was chartered we had members from five countries. Now we have members from eight countries. The rate of non-Japaese members was 31.8 percent. Now, it's 50 percent.

If you are interested in honing your public speaking skills in a diverse environment, visit us at one of our meetings. You can contact us from here.