| Event: |
Inauguration of IPA Toastmasters |
| Date / Time: |
Saturday, 18 July 2009 |
| Venue: |
Singtel Recreation Room, 33 Exeter Road |
INAUGURATION OF IPA TOASTMASTERS
Text by YULIE KAWAII
Pictures by ADE KRISTIANTO LIEM
The 18th of July 2009 was a milestone in our IPA Toastmasters history. It was the day for the club’s Charter Ceremony as well as the executive committees’ installation ceremony. The Singtel Recreation Room in Somerset where the event was to be held had been crowded with the guests of honor, executive committees, members and some new soon-to-be IPA Toastmasters members. They were all very supportive by coming early for the registration resulted in no delay to start the session.
The event itself started with the speech of some of the guests of honor. It was a moment to remember giving that all the guests of honor are cream of the crops of the Toastmasters community in Singapore.
The first guest of honor was Mr. Poh Kim Siong, the International Director of Toastmaster International. His speech was persuasive as well as encouraging. He said that the IPA Toastmasters was the pioneer for the Indonesians community who wished to enhance their skill in communication.
The second guest of honor was Mr. Gea Ban Peng, the sponsor for IPA Toastmasters Club. His speech was humorous and meaningful at the same time, as he described the Toastmasters organization like durian seeds. The durian had plenty of seeds, which could be planted to grow other durians. Like the Toastmasters club that has a lot of members and later that members will grow to be leaders that can share and inspire friends and community.
The third guest of honour was Mr. Johannes Wijaya, the president of IPA organization. Giving his speech, he mentioned that the idea of making the speech club was there since 6 years ago, but it was not realized. Then, only on 18 May 2009, the speech club was realized into IPA Toastmasters Club. Being the IPA Toastmasters members, it gave us an edge to be able to compete in foreign countries in which English is not our mother tongue.
After the speech session was the "New Club Charter Ceremony" presented by Mr. Goh Wei Koon, the Immediate Past District Governor. He, together with Mr. Aziz Mustajab, Lieutenant Governor of Education & Training did the "Presentation of Club Charter Certificate", "Presentation of Charter Members’ Certificate" and "Presentation of Certificates to Club Sponsors and Mentors".
Following that was the Installation of Club New Officers by Ms. Ann Vijay, the Area Governor. The process of the installation started with the pledge of the officers with the gavel passed from the Sergeant-at-arms ended to the President, continued with the presenting the pin to the officers, Inaugural speech by Azhar Risyad, the president of IPA Toastmasters Club and ended with the cake cutting by all the executive committees.
Risyad Azhar, the President of IPA Toastmasters
The newly-inaugrated IPA Toastmasters officers
MOVING ON WITH THE AGENDA
Done with the eventful ceremonies that marked important milestones in IPA Toastmasters' short period of existence, the committee acted immediately on the next agenda After the break time for the refreshments and networking sessions, the Toastmaster of the day, Rambo introduced the session on chapter meeting. It started with the first project speech of Yulie. Delivering her first project with enthusiasm, she managed to make all the audiences paid full attention to her. Her speech covered the story about her name, her interests in study especially language and philosophy and ended beautifully of giving the suggestions of how to get to know her better. To make it more interesting, she put some jokes and quotes in her speech. One of the quotes was "Live life to the fullest as if today is your last day".
IPA Toastmasters in session
Next was the Table Topic session. Wenny as the Table Topic Master of the day presented a very interesting topic for the choices of the questions, it was "Facebook". She explained what facebook was and started the session by calling Yulie to be one of the speakers of the table topic session. The questions were made simple and interesting so that everybody can speak freely in front of public. The winner for the table topic session was Johannes Wijaya, no other than the President of the IPA. If you think that it was a scam, it was not, for the speech was remarkably interesting resulted in him winning the most votes for the best table topic speaker.
After the table topic session, it was the project speech evaluation by Savitri, one of IPA Toastmasters’ mentors. The evaluation was very constructive covering what the speaker had done well and what she could do to make it better. She mentioned that usually speakers would start to use quotes in the advanced project but Yulie has already used it in her first speech and it was a good one. Things to be improved are the body language and gestures as the speech was delivered well but it could be better if some gestures are included in it.
Handi as the timer did a very good job by making sure the meeting was within the allocated time and he did manage to make the meeting finish just nice and on time. Robby as the Ah Counter really sharpened his hearing and managed to catch some fillers of the speakers. The Language Evaluator was Stuart, a native English speaker, whom evaluated some uncommon words used in English. He corrected some mistakes made, such as Toastmaster of the day instead of Toastmasters of the say, double-edge sword instead of two-sided knife, and some other interesting observations. General Evaluator of the meeting was Azizah who was being kind to point out some things that was already good and some things need to be made better for improvement. The things that had been done well was the guests were taken care of, the executive committees were showing their dedication and enthusiasm to stay until the end of the meeting, free-of –charge guest fee for the meeting and some others that could be a very long list. Things need to be improved are the gavel that symbolized power was not put properly, lacking of the table for the evaluators to write down the evaluations and to put a direction or map to the meeting place.
To sum it up, everybody was doing a great job by taking his or her roles seriously. The quote of the day was "Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest" It perfectly synchronized with today’s meeting as the beginning of a new chapter for IPA Toastmasters, who just got the new officers’ installed to be the foundation of a new frontier!
IPA Toastmasters' newly-inaugrated officers, with members, friends, and loyal supporters