Annual Regional Conference of District 81 (Caribbean) Toastmasters.
Find Your Voice. Serve Your World
CARIBBEAN TOASTMASTERS gathered over the weekend of 16th to 18th October to convene their the three-day Annual Regional Conference of District 81 (Caribbean) Toastmasters. This Conference was held at the Accra Beach Hotel and Resort, in Christ Church, Barbados.
The theme of The Conference was “Triumph Through Teamwork”, and Toastmasters attending were exposed to a variety of topics that helped to enhance their performance as competent communicators and leaders. Some of these were: “What’s Funny About Being Funny”
and “Get Your Financial Life Fit: Managing Your Finances In Turbulent
Times And Beyond”, among others.
Two of the highlights of the Conference were a Speech Evaluation Contest where competitors were given a test speech to evaluate; and a Humorous Speech Contest where another set of competitors presented their own speech to be judged by regional Toastmasters. These took place on Saturday, 17th October.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ participation came through Toastmaster Jacinta Thomas-Elliot in the Speech Evaluation contest and Gloria Williams in the Humorous Speech Contest. These two qualified to represent the country after they won their respective contests here in a competition which took place on 4th October at the Paradise Beach Hotel at Villa.
With a speech entitled: “It Pays To LiListeningo;, Gloria took her audience through some of her experiences as a child where her neglect for effective listening landed her and another member of her family into serious trouble.
From her initial appearance on stage, Gloria had the crowd laughing as she portrayed that indeed, she had learnt that one should dress to suit the content of his speech. In a presentation riddled with excellent diction, intonation, vocal variety and perfect grammar, Gloria’s black-lace, old fashioned suit; grandmother wig and Steve-Urkel-style glasses, were simply compliments to her wealth of dramatic gestures which she unloaded on the crowd.
So now, the Caribbean audience will never forget that especially when receiving instructions, one should always listen. Regional Toastmasters were swept away by the fact that when given the instruction by her older brother to approach a vagrant and say “Togo the beast!” and run, Gloria impulsively ran up to him without listening properly, stood up there and said, “Togo the beast and run!” This almost cost her time, as the audience who were warned to minimize their laughter until after the speeches, almost could not stop laughing.
At the end of the evening, Gloria was awarded Champion. Keith Yarde of Barbados placed second and Carlyle Fletcher of Trinidad and Tobago placed third. The other competitors hailed from the Cayman Islands, Curacao, Guyana, Jamaica and St. Maarten. The Evaluation Contest which took place on that same afternoon, saw Kimberly Valendi Dorceus of Haiti emerging the winner.
Tags: Winner Caribbean Humorous Speech Contest