SVG Toastmasters

GLORIA DOES THE DOUBLE FOR SVG!

By Gloriah…

Toastmaster Gloria Williams is now the Caribbean Toastmaster Humorous Speech Champion.  She won this title at the just concluded Caribbean Toastmasters Conference of District 81, which was held at the Accra Beach Hotel during the weekend of October 16^th to 18^th.  

On Sunday, 4^th October 2009, Gloria won the local leg of the competition from a field of three contestants, at the Toastmasters Annual Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contests held at the Paradise Beach Hotel.  This title made her eligible to compete at the regional level.

The regional competition took place on Saturday, 17^th October during the District 81 Conference.  With a speech entitled: “It Pays To Listen”, 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. 

One thing is for sure.  And that is that 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.