Igniters Christmas Party 2014!

Igniters gathered at Marion's home (VP of Membership) for our yearly Christmas Party. Everyone brought pot luck items. Marion went out of her way and made us all delicious lasagna, punch, deserts and salad. Thanks so much for all the work you went to to provide us with a great environment for our party Marion!

We finished the evening with a White Elephant gift exchange. In an interesting twist we were all required to participate in a round of table topics before we could choose a gift. Marvin and Nandini also brought a series of sticky notes for our backs and we were required to try to deduce who we were by asking questions of each other.

All in all I believe everyone enjoyed a fantastic evening together. We will enjoy a short break and then we will reconvene in January.

Communication Award and New Member Induction

Congratulations Chris on achieving your Competent Communicator Award! This is a wonderful achievement - first ten speeches! The first speech manual covers various objectives including organization, get to the point, vocal variety, body movement, and using props.

Some of the benefits he gained from joining Toastmasters was more confidence, a willingness to take more risks, and practising new skills. Chris has now started his own business!

Igniters celebrated with standing ovations, President Nandini gave a speech honoring Chris, and Mona the Mentoring Coordinator baked treats for us all to celebrate. For every award, a member brings treats on behalf of the club to show our support!

Marion our VP of Membership gave a warm and welcoming induction to our newest member Michael. Great to have you at Igniters and looking forward to your first speech in January!

The theme was Movies and the members munched popcorn and every time the challenge word of director was used the members would knock on the tables. It was a fun evening of learning.

Daryl earns his Advanced Communicator Bronze.

President Nandini and VP Public Relations Chris congratulate VP Education Daryl on completing his Advanced Communicator Bronze award. Daryl works hard for Igniters every week by completing our agendas. Daryl often routinely fills in two speech slots which really helps us to keep our meetings engaging.

Congratulations Daryl on your accomplishment. You bring a lot with you to Igniters.

Toastmasters can inspire a leap of faith.

A year and a half ago I joined Toastmasters. I quickly jumped into writing speeches and participating in table topics. I realized that I was speaking a lot about not enjoying my work. A friend of mine had a health issue and I knew I needed to change.

When you are working full time it is sometimes hard to make a change without feeling overwhelmed. During the course of gaining my CL I realized that over the last several years I had only been setting financial goals for myself. The CL showed me again that I needed to start working toward something bigger, and that I could only eat an elephant in small bites.

I formed a plan to start a home based business. In the format of the CL manual I started to list the steps required to make the change. I worked on a business plan, took out a business licence, created a website, printed business cards. I started to promote myself and before you know it I had a viable side business worked up. I worked on building a bit of a safety net and I was almost ready to jump.

All I needed now was some confidence. During my work for my CL and CC I had done some work that garnered more results than I expected. I realized that this business venture may be the same. That's all it took -- I became self employed.

Toastmasters provided me : a framework to work from, a peer group to bounce ideas off of, built in cheerleaders, coaches and mentors. Most importantly it allowed me believe in myself again.

I was inspired to take a leap of faith by being involved in Toastmasters. I know others will be as well.

Induct Michael

VP Membership Marion completed an induction ceremony tonight to welcome our newest Igniter Member Michael!

We are looking forward to learning more about Michael in January when he completes his Ice Breaker speech.

Micheal is a new addition to the Toastmaster arena and we are very happy that he chose to join Igniters. Welcome Micheal. we know you will learn a lot from being a member of Igniters!