Taking Your Toastmaster Skills Outside the Club

Each of us have our reasons for joining Toastmasters. Some look to improve their confidence and poise by becoming more effective communicators; others seek to become better leaders and thereby help others to succeed. The supportive environment provided by Toastmasters is an ideal venue to practice and hone these skills.

But that need not be the limit of your horizons. There’s a great big world out there that’s aching for competent leaders and skilled communicators, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t walk out onto the world stage. Taking your Toastmaster skills outside the club environment is the next logical step; and it can be both fun and rewarding.

Two District 38 Toastmasters will be doing just that. At 1:00 PM on Sunday, October 1, 2017, DTM Ken Krawchuk will be staging a rally on the steps of the Harrisburg Capitol Rotunda to announce his intent to run for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2018. Talk about stepping outside the club! Joining him on the Capitol steps will be DTM Shel Taylor to serve as Master of Ceremonies for the event.

Are you busy that Sunday? Here’s your chance to see two experienced Toastmasters in action; exercising the skills they learned at their local clubs, only this time employing them in a serious public endeavor.

The details are all coming together as smoothly as if it were just another Toastmasters meeting. Shel will open the event and welcome the crowd in her own inimitable way (and of course talk up Toastmasters!), then introduce Ken’s introducer, a legendary figure from the Libertarian Party’s history and one of the co-founders of the Party, Don Ernsberger.

Ken’s mission that day will be to present a speech of TED Talk quality and length, then face the ultimate challenge in Table Topics: unscripted random questions from the public. Even more challenging, the media is expected to come out in full force, including television cameras, reporters, and photographers who are there to capture every word and gesture. There’s nothing like a live media event to test a Toastmasters determination!

Shel and Ken have been preparing for events such as this for a long, long time. Ken has been a Toastmaster for 20 years, and is currently a member of Positively Charged Toastmasters, ETS Toastmasters, Furphy Toastmasters at Drexel University, and the Eastern Penn Advanced Club. Shel has been a Toastmaster even longer, and is a member of the Central Penn Toastmasters, the Susquehanna Ice Breakers and a founding member of the Susquehanna Advanced Toastmasters club. Together they have almost a half a century of Toastmasters experience to bring to the world stage.

If you’re eager to learn a trick or two and observe two of District 38’s finest as they perform their Toastmasters magic outside the confines of the club, consider joining them on the Capitol steps in Harrisburg on Sunday, October 1st at 1 PM. All the details are on Ken’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/KenK4Pa, and you can reserve free tickets for the afternoon event at http://KenK4Pa.com/OctoberFirst.htm. Also, that evening there’ll be a big reception in downtown Harrisburg, and tickets are available at https://www.KenK4Pa.com/OctoberFirstParty!.htm.

Come and support your fellow Toastmasters as they take that giant leap outside the club. And it will certainly contribute to their composure to see in the crowd some of the same supportive, friendly faces they’ve seen for so many years at their club meetings, faces like yours.

Composed by Ken Krawchuk, DTM