“In the middle of difficulty, lies an opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
On 13th June, Saturday, one such opportunity was sought. Despite the pandemic and the current situation of COVID – 19, Area A3 from Nepal, Area G2 from Gurgaon and Area E5 from Delhi were able to join hands to conduct an online INTERNATIONAL JOINT METING. Thanks to the online meetings, the barriers among the various toastmasters club operating thousands of miles away from one another are removed and we could come together as one.
As the TMoE for the meeting, I wanted to make it fun and interesting for the participants and something we all could relate on. After much thought, I realized that most of us love to eat and consider ourselves to be a foodie. So why not talk about the interesting and the common foods from Nepal and India? Hence, I came up with the theme “Sweet and Savories” where I showed pictures of different types of street food items, snacks, and sweets from Nepal and India. However, Laphing got all its attention and buzz throughout the meeting as I had made the participants guess what it could be by simply showing its picture and describing its taste. Some of them even guessed it as “ Spicy Dhoklaa”.
For the featured speech session, we had 3 speakers prepared from each area who were evaluated by 3 evaluators from the 3 different areas respectively. Our 1st speaker was TM Reena Sarin from Area G2 Gurgaon and was evaluated by TM Washim Ansari from Leadbox Toastmasters Club of Area A3. The 2nd speaker was DTM Saurabh Lohani, the Associate Program Quality Director, District 41, and was evaluated by TM Guneet Kaur. And the 3rd speaker was TM Shaktimaan from TMSL Area E5 and was evaluated by TM Medhavi Gupta. Table Topics Session was led by TM Deepak Damodar Sharma from North Stars Toastmasters Club who gave really interesting topics related to the cultural diversity from both the countries.
Lastly, the evaluation session was led by the enthusiastic General Evaluator TM Saurav Fialok, who gave a detailed evaluation and feedback to all the role-players and the meeting itself. With this, the 2 hours in the meeting was spent just in the blink of an eye. The participation of the audience, the speeches of the speakers, and the aura of the meeting were all overwhelming and pleasing. Behind the scenes work of planning, texting, and connecting with people of other clubs through group chats and working on the roleplayers and agendas since the past week felt worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity of hosting the meeting with members from India and Nepal.
Riti Subba, VPE, KCM Toastmasters
Published in Inkspire Issue 4. Click here for the full newsletter.