Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI), Kathmandu was organized by Area A3 on 1st February 2020 at NAMI College.
Toastmasters from all over Nepal joined the training. It was a whole day event, first half for Judges Training Program (JTP) and the latter half was Leadership Training Program (LTP).
Toastmasters has a history of 28 years in Nepal, and with continuous growth, Nepalese
Toastmasters need increased guidance to be better. TLI was organized to instill growth and professionalism among members.
Overwhelming participation was registered, which reflects the enthusiasm of Toastmasters to learn and expand their knowledge. The event was also an opportunity for Toastmasters all around Nepal to network and bond with each other. With the sheer growth in membership and clubs all around, TLI was needed to remind the value of Toastmasters International and to have uniformity in standards across old and new clubs.
Toastmaster Gaurav Agrawal, District 41 Finance Manager came for the JTP training which was part of the TLI session. In JTP the attendees learned how evaluation is different from judging. While evaluation is about feedback for the growth of the speaker, judging for a contest is mostly being rational and rating the speaker on the content, delivery, and language used.
Toastmaster Agrawal clearly highlighted that judging is selecting a winner in an objective way.
For this, all the attendees were made to judge three speakers, Toastmasters Samjhana Rai, Manoj Basnet and Prashamsha Rijal. This exercise was conducted to pass the message that judging should be based on performance and biases of any kind should be avoided. The exercise was quite effective as all attendees got aware of biases that happen during judging a Toastmasters contest.
In the latter half, attendees had the LTP session, where experienced Nepalese Toastmasters including DTM Ranjit Acharya, DTM Suman Shakya, and Area Directors helped us to be better leaders. We also had a special session by Mr. Anil Chitrakar, which was one of the highlights of the event.
There were sessions on poster design, introduction of the Toastmasters Nepal website, how to have better presentations, how to navigate the Toastmasters membership path, and finally, attendees were broken down upon their self-interest of different executive committee roles. For each Ex-com role, a facilitator trained 10-25 attendees on the Do’s and mostly let the group reflect upon what better practices can be used for the success of the ex-com roles.
The session overall was successfully organized and executed, with attendees happy and enriched with knowledge. The bonding and camaraderie between all Nepalese Toastmasters could be felt. TLI ended with smiles and elevated passion for all.
Mridul Basnet, VPPR,
Kathmandu Toastmasters Club
Published in Inkspire Issue 3. Click here for the full newsletter.