YOUNG ADULT TOASTMASTERS CLUB - 1682476

THE VOXTerm 2014 - 2015 - Issue No. 14

THE VOXINSIDE THIS ISSUE OF

Officers Reports, Fun Intriguing Ar-ticles, Photos, a Crossword, and more...

Competition SeasonPhoto above was taken after the Area 46 Contest on March 13th 2015

e know time is going too fast when competition season is almost over. Next thing we know it, the headlines will read “The New Excom is Coming” but that’s an article for a different time.

The YATs has spent months preparing for competition season. The contestant have been rehearsing none stop and the mentors and coaches have been work-ing hard to train those contestants. It feels like it’s going to be a tough com-petition.

When the time came, the fight was nar-rowed down to the final three for each of the four contests.

The winners of the contests are as fol-lows:

TABLE TOPICS: 1st - Hassan Al Alqami, 2nd - Lahiru Elvitigala, 3rd - Hala Naseeb

YAT LOVE

It’s usually just on Halloween when YAT tends to go all out with the themes, decore, and costumes. But this year, on February, the YATs have decided to try something a little different. They want-ed to make Valentines day a little bigger by celebrating L.O.V.E throughout the month.

The first meeting of the month was on the 4th of February and it was themed “Celebration of LOVE”. This theme was a great way to start off the love month. They celebrated love like no other; with hearts and smiles.

And the second meeting of the month was on the 18th of February. It was themed “Crazy Stupid Love”. Like most of YAT’s themes, this one is a funny one with a hidden agenda. The aim of that meeting was to uncover the mystery of why love is so complicated. Unfortunately is was too complicated to explain, but love was spread throughout the meet-ing with little cupid letters that was given out to all the members and the guests present that night. It was defin-tely a great way to spread the love.

This feels like a new tradition that YAT needs to uphold.

W EVALUATIONS: 1st - Lahiru Elvitigala, 2nd - Hassan Al Alqami, 3rd - James Mumbi

HUMOROUS: 1st - Hassan Al Alqami, 2nd - Nada Qamber, 3rd - Mohammed Tarradah

INTERNATIONAL: 1st - Lahiru Elviti-gala, 2nd - Habib Mubarak, 3rd - Najla Qamber

The first two winners will be going mov-ing forward to the Area 46 Contest. (pg 5 – Area 46 Photos)

President TM Nasreen and VPM TM Ruqaya receiving our Smedly Award

Photos of the our love month

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SMEDLEY AWARD5 NEW MEMBERS

AUGUST - SEPTEMBER

2014

Officers Updates

As for term 2014-2015, YAT’s financial status has been stable and not-so-alarming. The collection of dues has also been smooth except for a few members quitting without paying their dues, This is common in all clubs and unavoidable. There has been no delays in our payments of semi-annual dues to the Toastmasters International. I must place on record my grateful appreciation to TM Khalid who has readily stood up to the challenges of financial management during my absence – this helped to maintain the club affairs very smoothly. I am very hopeful that we could end the term with a satisfactory balance of funds.

TreasurerBy DTM Ahmed Rizvi

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Vice President Public RelationsBy TM Nada Qamber

Vice President Education By TM Hala Naseeb

Sergeant at ArmsBy TM Hassan Al Alqami

PresidentBy TM Nasreen Qamber

Vice President MembershipBy TM Ruqaya Abbas

SecretaryBy TM Sarah Marie Barcelona

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DCP Goals We are planning tvo achieve 10 DCP point by April 2015. We achieved 8 out of 10 so far, 2 more to go!

VPE Awards (Achieved)Club DCP Achiever Award - 8 out of 10 DCP points; Ribbon for Club banner, Certificates for all members. Club Fast Track Communicator Award - 4 CCs (Hala, Najla, Rafiq & Maram); Ribbon for Club banner, Certificates for members who achieved CCs.Leadership Achiever Award - 2 Cls (Nasreen & Hassan) ; Ribbon for Club banner, Certifi-cates for members..

VPE Awards (In Progress)Club Fast Track Advanced ACs - 2 ACs ; April 2015, Ribbon for Club banner, Certificates for members who achieved ACs (educational only). Triple Crown - 3 or more educations awards by April 30, 2015; Triple crown pin for club memberPassport Challenge - Visiting other clubs ; June 30, 2015 ; Trophy and certificate for club member.

MeetingsNew Years “Auld Lang Syne” Meeting on 7th January 2015th. Meetings are showcasing more advanced speeches with AG Khalid Ismael’s Speciality Occaison Speeches and Rafi’q Story Telling and Humorous Speeches.

I would like to congratulate everyone who made it through to Area. You all did an awe-some job! We’re all so proud of you. We know contests can be nerve wrecking but you pulled through and made it! Hello fellow YAT’s , As I normally report in our

regular meetings, “ I have nothing to report. “ But I do have a reminder to all members to please keep me updated if you visit outside cvlub meetings so that I could take note of it and add it to your TOY points. For, those who are not aware, TOY stands for Toastmaster of the Year, So if you would want to receive an award by the end of this term. Please attend our regular meetings and do your speeches and also visit other clubs. By the end of this term we will know who will get the Toast-master of the year award!!

There isn’t much to report on my side but here is an update on what’s been going on my part as Sergeant at Arms: Our inventory is fairly updated. We have am-ple amount of ballots, ribbons, etc. to last us the rest of the term. And my future goals at Sergeant at Arms is to keep everything organized with labels and to properly store our inventory.

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As vice president membership, I am very happy that we have new member, TM Fatima, but we are not safe from irregular and member dues to club. Those members will not follow treasures as well. YAT has got 20 active members, unfortunately 9 members that are inactive.

To end my report , I really need to all members help me to find new members to at least achieve the Beat the Clock award and for YAT to be distinguish club.

If you have any problems or issues please inform excom.

Seven more meetings to go until YAT cele-brates its fifth year! We have passed the Area level competitions and are preparing our winners to aim for Division and District level! We are closing in on achieving our 10 out of 10 DCP points and hope to achieve more District awards before the end of term. We have stuck together thick and thin and look forward to more challenges to persevere as a

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club and as a family!

Our Social Networking has attracted many cheering onlookers as well as potential guests to come join in on the fun. The club has promoted itself in an extraordinary man-ner that builds on it’s social image to pro-mote young leading communicators as well as it’s core values. The overall club perfor-mance is notable, with members striving for excellence and creativity.

YAT’s eight Executive Committee meetings have been prompt and outstanding, with fresh new ideas to better the club’s overall standards and to achieve greater and greater success. With the assistance of the club, we know that we will be able to reach further than any YATster has gone before!

The journey is still going on and on, and I’m enjoying it every step of the way.

My report is as follows:Facebook, Insgatram, Twitter, Youtube and Website have been continuously up-dated as every meeting passes.

Newsletter, this is our third newsletter of the term *high five*. Three newsletters down and one more to go. Our next and fi-nal newsletter of the term will be released on June.

Educational Videos, now that our script has been finalized we have commenced the auditioning process. The auditions will be going on until the first week of April, then the casting and filming process will com-mence.

That’s it for my part. :)

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A YOUNG TOASTMASTER’S GUIDE TO SURVIVAL

We all love to laugh, but we tend to doubt ourselves when the opportunity arises. Those that doubt come in two categories, those who feel they are not funny and those who don’t know where to bring in the funny. The actual truth of it? We all are funny, but in our own very different ways. The point is to bring your inner humor rather than copying from one another. That’s why every comedian has a specific style that makes them ac-cessible to their audience.

So what do you need to do to tap into your funny bone? Yourself! View your-self outside the box and see what makes you. Use those characteristics that de-fine you humorously like being tall as a tree, short as a stump. Poking fun at yourself is one of the easiest and accessi-ble ways to be funny to your audience. It shows sincerity and strength in esteem to acknowledge your faults. But remem-ber, do not shamelessly insult yourself!

Once you’ve learnt to make yourself open to the audience, then comes your topic to prepare. Avoid stringing jokes from the internet, one after the other, with no purpose and avoid clichés such as talking about wives...You’re better than that! The best topics are those that you have lived through. Go through your memories and see those that made you chuckle, or awkward scenarios and build on it. Feel free to embellish and exaggerate but not to the point where your audience would stop believing you. Keep it real and believable.

Once you have learnt to make fun of yourself in jest, and have access to your fun memories…the most important thing is to have a message. Humorous speech contests requires you of course to be humorous, but you need to have

Give in to Your Inner Humor

by TM Khalid Ismael

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a positive message. It helps seal the deal as a speaker, makes you more than just a comedian. By choosing your message, you can then build on your memories and poke fun at yourself that relates to that message.

Bring this altogether, and you’ll be a lit-eral barrel of laughs. Think positive and forward, and open your eyes to silver lin-ings in life. You’ll begin to see the humor in life, and the beauty of laughter that you can never ever go without!

Finding the perfect topic for any speech can be as daunting a task as finding the perfect gift for your significant other. He/she could be happy/pretend that they’re happy with just about anything you give them but there’s always that ONE gift you could give which would be in their memory for a lifetime. Coming up with a topic for your speech is really not so diffderent to this.

Your audience would appreciate any topic you present to them, but there’s always that ONE topic, which if supported with an attention grabbing opening, thought provoking content and a memorable conclusion, could remain in the memory of your audience for years to come.

The International Contest is a platform for vibrant, energetic and inspirational speakers to showcase their talents and when all speakers showcase great technique in content and presentation, the DIFFERENCE between being placed and not, could boil down to the choice of topic. If we look at this years’ world champion of public speaking, Dananjaya Hettiarachchi (Go Sri Lanka!) and his topic – ‘I see something’, it’s brilliant

to note how he captured the whole essence of his speech in just those three words (Go to YouTube and watch it if you haven’t, Public Speaking at its best!). And those of you who watched it, would most probably agree with me – those 3 words resonate throughout the speech and is the brilliant message we take home at the end of the day.But the question is: How do we come up with that ONE topic?

Your topic gives your speech an identity and after one has put so much effort into making a speech, it’s a real shame if that extra time was not put to come up with a suitable topic for your speech. Take time to think about different topics (around 4 to 6) and short list the ones you think suit best for your speech. Once shortlisted, ask your mentor/family/friend to help you choose the most suitable topic.

A topic should create suspense and get your audience to wonder what your speech is about. If your topic is plain and the audience has already figured out what you will be speaking about, some of them may tune out before you’ve even started to speak! For example, if I were to speak on Happiness and my speech was entitled ‘Happiness’, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what I am about to speak on. But if I were to entitle my speech ‘How to stay young forever’ and I went on to speak about how happiness is scientifically proven to prolong one’s life, the audience would more likely be interested in what I have to say.

But personally, the most important factor I take into consideration when finding a topic is how memorable can I make my topic. A long and complex topic would most likely not stay in anyone’s mind further than the end of the competition, but a simple topic which connected with purpose throughout the speech would be much more memorable to the

Finding the Perfect Topic for Any Speechby TM Lahiru Elvitigala

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A few exciting moments from our club competitions

YAT at the Area 46 Contest!

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Dealing with Nervous Jitters During

Competitionsby TM Nada Qamber

Even if you say “Oh no, I’m not nervous at all. I’m completely ready for the contest”, but it’s almost your turn and you can’t help but feel butterflies is your belly, your mind is racing to the never end-ing finish line, sweaty palms, and heavy heart palpitations. Those nervous jitters are something we can’t control. It’s com-

pletely normal to feel this way before delivering a speech or any sort of per-formance, even if you’ve done it a billion times before. Everyone gets nervous whenever they’re about to get on stage or get in front a large crowd of people. Again, it’s completely normal.

The big question here is, “Even if you’re nervous as a Chihuahua, how do you still get the guts to literally push yourself on that stage?”

A few minutes before I get on stage my palms begin to mist up, I could hear my heart beating in my ears and I would literally shake like Chihuahua – hence the reference. It feels impossible to get through. I would think of every bad scenario that could possibly ruin my entire performance, from falling flat on my face to going completely blank half way through the speech. But in the end, I would always manage to get myself up there and the feeling of relief when it’s all over is unimaginable.

Based on experience, here are a few ways to push through those nervous jit-ters:

Rehearse, Rehearse, RehearseJust like any other speech we all need to rehearse and practice none stop for two weeks straight. But like the most of us, the earliest we can begin rehearing is about a week before the actual com-petition. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter how long you rehearse, what matters is to know and feel confident about your speech. If you know your speech like the back of your hand, the confidence in your speech will grow which will in turn reduce those jitters, just a tad bit.

Rehearse in front of an audience Even if it’s just your mom and your cat, rehearsing in front of any sort of audi-ence will give you a feel of how speak-ing in front of people is like. It may be awkward and nerve wrecking at first but

Evaluate To Motivate by TM Ruqaya Abbas

Evaluation is the most important part of toastmasters international. It helps speakers improve their speaking skills. There are technics that you have ask yourself before doing this important session, how I can evaluate and what’s a way to be a good and motivational evaluator. For evaluating you have divide your evaluation technics to three steps:1. Before the speech• Review and discuss the manual objec-tives and evaluation guideline;• Ask about any point regarding the speech or the speaker speaking ability.2. During the speech :• Use note to record “weak and strong points ,what’s your interesting in the speech as general and focus on mas-sages”;• Note each point that you think it should improve;• Focus on manual objective and eva-lute by speaker level not by your level.3. During evaluation session:• Personalize your language: means to

put yourself in the position of speaker and evaluate as you like to be in the mo-ment, don’t hurt speaker by your words and persuade them to do more speech;• Stay away from words “you didn’t –you should have –you failed” by these words speaker will hurt and maybe never come back again with pervious confident and the fear of speaking from the audience filling in their mind ;• For improvement use words like I be-lieve –my reaction or my suggestion;• Always evaluate by maximum speech that shows what’s you heard” listening skill” ,what you saw “imagination skill” and what’s you understand and how to solve it “leadership-solving problem and open mind”;• Don’t say I’m disagreeing for points speakers had spoken before just recom-mend them to not speak in this topic;• Try to give more stories and examples to audience understand your points;• Try to connect your idea and summary all your key points

Remember to evaluate the speech not the speaker, and be honest but think how to inspire the audience especially the speaker to apply what they learned and heard from you. Be positive and helpful and help your club and yourself to be a good speaker and leader in the near future.

Reference: Toastmaster international manual “evaluate to motivate”

A YOUNG TOASTMASTER’S GUIDE TO SURVIVAL

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audience. As the saying goes, Keep in simple, stupid.

Delivering a speech is a privilege, we have been given 5 to 7 minutes of the audience’s lives to make an impact with our message. How we deliver the speech may not be remembered, but the content of our speeches can make an impact to a single person in an audience of thousands and that to me, is what makes public speaking worth it. Placing so much effort for just a topic may seem pointless but it defines the identity of your speech. Challenge yourself to come up with a witty topic for every speech you deliver and you will not regret that extra time and effort once you’ve found that ONE topic..

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Name the YATster

Across2. Likes to pretend she was in Narnia and walk out of her closet.4. Her two most favorite hobbies are singing and drawing6. Used to steal Nasreen’s allowance when she was 5-6 years old.7. Likes horror films because her mom used to watch a horror films when she was pregnant.8. Broke his hand on a field trip in

* You may ask the VPPR for the answers. :)

A YAT COMIC STRIPA YOUNG TOASTMASTER’S GUIDE TO SURVIVAL & A CROSSWORD

8th grade by riding a bicycle down-hill. The field trip had to be cut short because of him.

Down1. Can imagine loud music in his head to the point when he actu-ally can’t hear anything.3. Speaks to cats as if they were real humans with problems.5. Love to bully guys.

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once you continue practicing in front of people, you’ll feel much more comfort-able doing it. This will help you to get used to the idea that speaking in front of others is really no big of a deal.

Tell yourself to ChillDays after of none stop practice and many sleepless nights later, the day has finally arrived, and those nervous jitters either have already kicked in the night before or will do so right before your name is called up. And when it does kick in, it’s time to fight back and tell your self to chill.

You’re probably sitting there like a rest-less father-to-be in the waiting room. Chill, relax, it’s going to be fine. You know your speech like you know the back of your hand. You’ve got the skill of a great speaker, and you’ve got the confidence and the strength to push through and walk up on to that stage and deliver that speech like the fearless individual we all know you can be. So tell your self to chill, you’ll do great!

Smile On Fearless OneWhen my name is called up, I usu-ally take a deeeep deeeep deeeeeeep breath in – or seven, and walk up front with a bright and sweet smile on my face. I believe that smiling helps sooth the nerves since they’re mostly brought on by fear.

Throughout the number of times I got up in front of an audience, I feel like it’s that smile that gave me the guts to get me up on stage – but that’s something that has yet to be experimented on.

So, are you ready to get up there and beat those fluttering butterflies? You should be. You are strong, courageous, and brave. You are brilliant, awesome, and badass. You go out there, beat those nervous jitters, and speak from your heart.

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Area 46/Division C/District 20Manama, Kingdom of Bahrainwww.facebook.com/YATbhwww.youtube.com/YATbhTwitter - @YoungAdultTMInstagram - @youngadulttoastmasterswww.youngadulttm.wix.com/yatbh

WE’D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

WHERE LEADERS ARE MADE

People may watch you speak within our club or on Youtube, but they won’t know you, until they read what you have to say. The VOX will always be a welcome place to showcase that. Try your hand at writing, train yourself to inspire through your words. Seize this opportunity, Young Adults and remember that the Pen is always Mightier than the Sword!

Nasreen QamberPresident Young Adult Toastmasters2014 - 2015

Vice President Public Relations Team

* TM Nada Qamber (Photography, Webmaster, Newsletter Organizer, Formatter, etc)* TM Najla Qamber (Videography & Youtube Admin)

Contributors

* YAT Members

Formatter & Compiler

* TM Nada Qamber

Photo Editor

* TM Nada Qamber

Photographers

* TM Nada Qamber* TM Najla Qamber* Guest Ali Deabel* Guest Sithija De Silva

Honorable Mentions

* TM James Mumbi

FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL DESK OF YAT THE VOX ISSUE NO. 08 TEAM

hen I first joined YAT, I noticed that YAT as

like minded individuals, yet did not yet flourish in the world digitally.

YAT has changed greatly since then. The Vox was conceived in 2012-2013, with the word “VOX”, meaning the voice in latin. The Vox has grown since then, incorporating the new tidbits like Fun Facts, a YAT crossword and a comic strip. It is a place where young minds can articulate their thoughts and messages through written word, a skill that needs to be honed to better their own speaking skills. Most of us, now a days, limit our writing to text messaging, emails and sometimes a post-it note to be passed around during meetings. When was the last time you wrote something because you wanted to record your thoughts? I bet it ’s been a while.

Since it ’s the season of change (Spring time), I invite anyone reading, to take a few minutes to write a paragraph about how you feel, how you want to feel, what your wishes and your dreams are or could be, and I want you to keep that paragraph somewhere where you can read it, take it down to re-edit it when you want, and if possible, extend it to a page.

Writing, be it typed or handwritten, is a very important way for us, as communicators, to practise gathering our thoughts and to allow our minds time to process the creative juices we have within ourselves. It is important as a speaker, to be able to write what we think, not just speak what we write.

Wa club was greatly unknown to the rest of toastmasters in Bahrain. They would visit only because of word of mouth, and we hardly had any digital footprint to share with the world. We were suppose to be a young club, full of socially connected,