by Hilda Guffey VPE San Angelo Toastmasters
“Good evening, Toastmasters!” Or… should we say, “Good Morning Toastmasters?!!”
On Friday, February 2nd (which was Saturday, February 3rd in Malaysia) San Angelo Toastmasters held a joint meeting with HELP University Toastmasters Club for a Cultural Exchange Joint Toastmasters Meeting.
Both clubs enjoyed an evening of sharing unique cultural experiences. Each club had a speaker share a presentation that would highlight some aspect of their home country. Jenny Riddle, from San Angelo Toastmasters, presented a speech titled, “Texas Our Texas.” Koay from Malaysia gave a humorous presentation about his family in Malaysia.
The Table Topics session provided another opportunity to learn more about Texas and Malaysia with each club conducting a round of questions.
A question-and-answer session was added to the agenda to allow both clubs to learn and experience more from the other club.
Aside from a formal opening of the meeting that included an introduction to Ralph Smedley, founder of Toastmasters, the meeting agenda went down similar to most Toastmasters meetings.
Although we were miles apart, Toastmasters brought the two clubs together for a fun event. We learned that we had many similarities including that each club had a Jason – Jason Chan and Jason Jett! We made announcements about our D25 Speech Contest Season and one of our friends from Malaysia wanted to join and experience our contests. We reminded him that he would need to set his alarm for 3am (Malaysia time)!
I highly recommend that you, too, experience a Toastmasters meeting with another club to see what a small world it is after all. If you need any advice on how to conduct a cultural exchange meeting, contact anyone at sanangelotoastmastersclubs.org, and they will be happy to help!
