What is outside our club
The main source of our leanings as Toastmasters comes from our club meetings. Yet, there are people and other organizations outside the clubs so is our opportunity to learn.
There are layers of organizations outside the clubs. Several clubs are grouped together in an Area. Several areas are grouped together as a Division and several divisions as a District. Some districts are grouped together as one of the fourteen Regions that compose the entire Toastmasters International world. The Shin-Osaka Leaders Toastmaters Club belongs to Area F-3, Division F, District 76, and Region 14.
Especially important among those groupings is the District, which is provided with funds from Toastmasters International out of membership dues and organizes a lot of events using the funds. It determines some aspects of what we do in each club. For example, one of the most important learning opportunities in Toastmasters is the speech contest, and each district decides what kind of speech contest they have each year out of four alternatives, Humorous Speech Contest, Evaluation Contest, Table Topics Contest, and Tall Tales Contest.
On September 25, President Yuki and Vice President Education Hideo attended a District Council Meeting (DCM for short) together with Vice President Membership Mariko, who also serves as the Vice President Education in one of our neighboring clubs, Senri Toastmasters Club. The District Council Meeting is a deliberative organ of a district. At the meeting today, the financial report and the audit report were presented and approved. The district visions and strategies were explained among others.
We will make some adjustments to our plans based on the information provided today. One thing that caught our attention was the Club Energizing Campaign. There will be some activities for each member and club can participate in to earn points. They can win some prizes according to the points they earn. Though we are not prize-driven, we could utilize the program to give ourselves a little boost.