Since the start of the year, we have had 3 new members join our club! Remember

to introduce yourself to them and make them welcome when you see them.

In this issue

Meet our new

members

1

Editorial 1

1st meeting of 2014 2

Chinese New Year

Meeting

2-3

Member

Achievements

3

Leadership 4

Going Beyond Our

Club

5

Evaluation Contest 6

Roll of Honour 7

Announcements 7

Important Dates 7

Meet Our

Toastmaster

Valentine’s couple

8

Meet Our New Members

Canning Vale

Toastmasters J a n u a r y & F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 V o l u m e 3 , I s s u e 3

Satish

Gummadavelli

Rahman

Khandker

To our new members :

Welcome to Canning Vale Toastmasters and congratulations on

taking that first step in your Toastmasters journey. Every member is

willing to help you at any time and we will all support you with your

progress towards your goals.

To make the most of your membership, be sure to read A

Toastmasters Promise in your Competent Communicator Manual.

We all look forward to watching you become the speaker and leader

you want to be.

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2014. I hope everyone has had a good start to

2014.

This newsletter issue will look back at the Toastmasters events in January and

February. January is the month of NEW YEAR and February is the month of…

Saint Valentine’s! If you continue reading through this issue, you will notice the

Chinese New Year and Saint Valentine’s theme!

I hope you enjoy the newsletter just as much as I enjoy making them. :)

Editorial

Chris Hunt

P a g e 2

During Chinese

New Year, the

colour red is

commonly worn

because it is

believed that red

will scare away evil

spirits and bad

fortune.

First meeting of 2014—Meeting #281

C a n n i n g V a l e T o a s t m a s t e r s

Chinese new year meeting

Toastmasters meeting at...

Sanctuary Waters Park

Welcome to the first meeting for the year!!

Nice park!

Gift from TM

I want one too..

The meeting was

great!

I am your toastmaster for the evening.

Chinese New Year themed meeting.

Looking Red!

And it was also my birthday! :)

New clothes for Chinese New Year! :P

Me in my finest..

Indian outfit

P a g e 3 V o l u m e 3 , I s s u e 3

Prosperity Shared

At our Chinese New Year Meeting, every attendee received a red velvet bag with a few coins

in, which is a Chinese tradition at New Year. This tradition is thought to bring prosperity to

the receiver. This year, I asked our members to keep the coins and return the bag the

following week with a donation for a children’s charity, to share our prosperity. Our

members were generous enough to return about $40 which I donated to a local children’s charity which

helps abused children, Parkerville Children and Youth Care. Here’s their mission

statement which I hope tells you why I chose this charity.

We strive to protect, care and advocate for children, youth and their

families who have experienced trauma from abuse and to provide a

therapeutic environment that will assist their recovery and potential for

growth.

Here’s a link to their website. Please have a look and see for yourself. http://www.parkerville.org.au/

Robyn Richards

Chinese new year meeting cont’d

Other moments from the meetings

Your club officers hard at work

Have you met

baby Kira?

First aid lesson from

Susanty

Member achievements

Rabeya’s

speech

debut at

the CVTM

Maksud being

the “star of the

night”

P a g e 4

C a n n i n g V a l e T o a s t m a s t e r s

Word of the month

Proliferation (noun):

- rapid growth or

increase in numbers

E.g. Proliferation of

Technology

Leadership

There are many good reasons why

Toastmasters teaches both communication

and leadership skills. People with good

communication skills are more likely to be

promoted to leadership positions, and good

leaders need communication skills to be

effective.

Leadership is difficult to define. It’s an

abstract concept that evokes as many

different reactions as there are different

kinds of people. Yet most of us know good

leadership when we see it, and we can often

tell when good leadership is missing by the

way a team or organization struggles

without it. At Toastmasters, our leadership

training program identifies the following

areas as essential to quality, effective

leadership:

Mission. A clear mission helps the leader

to focus the team so that they can ignore

distractions and pay attention to what’s

most important.

Values. When a leader can demonstrate

values that are in sync with the company’s

mission and the team’s goals, everyone

benefits.

Planning and goal-setting. With clear

goals and effective planning, leaders make

their expectations understood and team

members know what to do at all times.

Delegating authority. The job of

leadership is usually too big to handle alone.

By sharing responsibilities with the team, a

leader instils a sense of purpose and

empowerment.

Team building. Establishing trust, playing

to individual strengths, encouraging people

to work together—all are important aspects of

team building.

Giving feedback. Constructive, concise and

timely feedback is essential to each team

member’s success, and to the success of the

team as a whole.

Coaching team members. A good leader

must take on the role of trainer now and

t h e n , p r o v i d i n g e x p e r t a d v i c e ,

encouragement and suggestions for

improvement.

Motivating people. By providing a good

example, learning each team member’s needs

and giving rewards and incentives when

appropriate, a leader can inspire people to

achieve higher levels of performance.

Working for the team. Great leaders

encourage participation, facil itate

communication and provide an environment

where team success is more likely to occur.

Resolving conflict. Conflict between team

members is inevitable, and not always a bad

thing. A leader’s job is to resolve the conflict

in a just and reasonable way so that

productivity and morale do not suffer.

Do you know…

Your Competent Leadership (CL) manual is

your guide to being a competent leader?

Look out for your role in the meeting agenda. If you are

Toastmaster, Table Topic Master, Evaluator or Grammarian,

check out the respective project in your CL manual prior to

the meeting.

Do remember to bring your CL manual along to your

meeting and get any of the fellow toastmasters to evaluate

your performance!

Great leaders

promote

teamwork,

encourage

excellence,

foster growth

and even offer

criticism in a

productive way.

P a g e 5 V o l u m e 3 , I s s u e 3

Joining Toastmasters has helped improve our communication and leadership skills without any doubts. At

Toastmasters, we are able to think differently outside our comfort zone. It pushes us to a higher skill level so

that we can explore our hidden talents. In addition, by completing our Toastmaster educational program, we

are able to know where we stand.

The workshop “Going beyond your club” that I presented on the 18th February was supposed to be

accompanied by PowerPoint slides. However, on some occasion, technology fails when you really need them

most. When I knew the slides are not going to work I made up my mind to do the presentation without the

slides. After all I thought being in Toastmasters for quite some time I should be able to make a presentation

without the help of a projector and slides.

This is one example of how being a Toastmaster has transformed me into a more confident speaker. However,

I believe that any member in the club will have the question “is this all we have? I thought it is going to be

more exciting” after joining for some time. The answer is.. NO! There are plenty of opportunities available

throughout the year, such as Club contests, being a club officer and Toastmasters

Convention. It is your responsibility to explore them so you better be ready for any

eventuality and give yourself a chance to experience your unexplored talents.

If you are looking for opportunities to exploit your hidden talents, or further develop

your leadership and public speaking skills, Toastmasters is the perfect place to achieve

that!

Going beyond our club by Chandana Weerasekera

Leadership opportunity There are several officer positions within each Toastmasters club, both to spread the workload fairly and

to expand the leadership opportunities for club members. In our club, the club committee comprises of

President, Vice President Education (VPE), Vice President Membership (VPM), Vice President Public

Relations (VPPR), Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant at Arms (SAA).

If your goal is to further develop your leadership skills, now is the time to consider taking on one of the

club officer roles. For more information about these roles, feel free to speak to the respective club

officers.

You can also read more about club officer roles at http://toastmastersd17.org/resources/club-officers/

club-officer-roles/

President—Mike Palmer

VPE—Mark Richards

VPM—Julia Cao

VPPR—Huili Leow

Secretary—Andre Sequeira

Treasurer—John Cecchi

SAA—Carey-Ann Brett

We need you!

Do you need to complete Project 6, 8 or 10 in

your Competent Leadership Manual?

Do you enjoy writing or wanting to improve your

writing skills?

Are you good at organising?

Do you want to learn how to produce newsletter?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions,

please do not hesitate to contact Huili! We would

love to help you achieve your goal as well as

having you contributing to the Positive

Promotion Premiership (PPP). (You will

receive a lot of information about the PPP soon)

P a g e 6

C a n n i n g V a l e T o a s t m a s t e r s

Club’s Evaluation Contest

Left to right: Angela (Chair), Saliya, Chandana, Vanessa, Edward,

Steve, Mike Palmer.

William the Chief Judge Test Speaker, Josh McNess, from

Rockingham TM Club

Contest results: Third place: Vanessa; Second place: Saliya; First place: Mike Palmer

John Palmer

entertained us

with his story

on how he

taught hippos

to dance

sideways and

zig zagging

Table topics is

like telling a

mini creative

story . So next

time you are

stuck on a table

topics question,

make up your

answer!

Positive Promotion

Premiership (PPP)

Help us win the PPP award at the 2014

convention! Grab the Toastmasters Magazine

with the club stamp from the club and place it at

your surgery/dentist waiting room. Send your

picture evidence to Huili at hleow13@gmail.com.

P a g e 7 V o l u m e 3 , I s s u e 3

International Speech Contest

Tuesday 4th March

This is your chance to compete in the contest that could see you go on to represent our District at

the semi finals held at the Toastmasters International Convention in Kuala Lumpur in

August.

Power Up on the Peninsula

Weekend May 23-25

District 17 Convention—Registration now opens, hurry in and book your place today at:

http://www.poweruponthepeninsula.com/

Important Dates

Roll of Honour

CC—Frith Veitch

CC—Saliya Ranasinghe

Announcements!

Power Up On The

Peninsula

District 17 Convention

May 23-25th 2014

Registration is NOW OPEN for the May

District Convention. Book your place NOW

for the early bird discount rate before 1st

February 2014.

Note: Canning Vale will be subsidising all

member’s tickets to this outstanding event.

For more information, visit the website:

http://www.poweruponthepeninsula.com/

We need your help!

Our club is hosting the District 17 convention in

May and we need your skills to help make this a

success. Contact Emma for information about the

roles available.

What do you like best about Canning Vale

Toastmasters?

We believe our lovely, kind & warmhearted members

are the treasure of the club. We have been making

friends with many great people who help us a lot on

both our language and life.

What do you do for a living?

Eric is a software engineer and Julia is an export

documentation clerk.

Has Toastmasters helped you in your job and

if so, how?

Definitely. We were scared to speak at the beginning,

but now we have good relationship with colleagues

and can easily make phone calls which was deemed a

very difficult task in the past. Of course, we tried very

hard to learn and to improve, and Toastmasters

provided us with a great arena.

What’s next for you in Toastmasters?

We would like to be a confident speaker and will keep

working towards this goal.

Julia & Eric

Why did you join Toastmasters?

As new immigrants, our English was pretty

bad at that time we arrived in Australia 15

months ago. We were eagerly looking for an

opportunity to practice language and one

of our friends happened to be a member of a

Toastmasters club. She suggested to us to have

a try. In order to improve our English

and merge into the local society. We searched

online for the closest club and joined CVTM.

How long have you been members?

14 months.

We meet every Tuesday 6.30pm

Canning Vale College Library

Dumbarton Road

Phone: 0403 621 899 (Mike)

Phone: 0407 595 161 (Mark)

E-mail: president@toastmasterscv.net

Canning Vale Toastmasters

Meet Our Toastmaster Valentine’s couple...

Toastmasters

Where leaders are made @CVTMPerth

Canning Vale Toastmasters

Find us on Facebook or Twitter

That concludes the Jan/Feb newsletter issue.

I hope you enjoyed the first two months of

2014. Time passes so fast; There are only 10

more months to the year. What will you

achieve in these months?

P a g e 8