Attendance reached an all year high during our club meeting at Vancore in downtown Vancouver last week.  And even more good news….wait for it….Carla Maftechuk won the Division H Evaluation Contest!  We are very proud of her and this puts us closer to receiving our Distinguished Club Status.

Though it was another wet, umbrella-toting afternoon, members and guests alike showed up to practice their speaking skills and meet new people.

The meeting was called to order by Immediate Past President and Secretary, Jonathan who midway through, received a “mayday” (word of the day) having to leave and address urgent business while our esteemed Treasurer, Borzo seamlessly took over with much aplomb.

New members, and guests; Oliver, Dena and Chris, all contributed enthusiastically to the proceedings.  Angela gave a fantastic Ice Breaker that had the room captivated by her accomplishments and adventures in coming to Canada from China.  Her speech was evaluated by Theo, who is making strides in his own speaking abilities.

Victor stepped right up and did his CC #2 speech, a passionate and insightful talk on what it’s like to practice Buddhism.   Kate followed with an encouraging evaluation using the sandwich technique providing Victor with examples of what he did really well, an area to work on and summarized using the strengths of his speech.

With nearly a full house, speakers and those with major roles in the meeting were excluded from Table Topics to give the honored guests a chance to speak for 2 minutes if they so wanted.  Brave as they were, Dena, Oliver and Chris all went up to the front on their turn and gave excellent accounts of their views on the particular topic chosen for them.  Well done newbies!  (Note: It’s perfectly OK to simply observe for your first couple times as a guest.  Or you can participate if you want to.)

Table Topics were lead by Susan who also provided the fore-mentioned Word of the Day, “mayday” an international distress signal which comes from the French word m’aidez  which means “help me”.

A few days after the meeting, Susan and Theo witness Carla taking on the other five evaluation giants in the Division H Speech Contest held on April 19^th in Vancouver.

Out of all the candidates she was the last to evaluate the “Target Speech” given by award-winning speaker, Mustapha Lansana.  Unfazed, Carla’s expertise in evaluation placed her in the Winners Circle.  Again, her name was called last but not certainly not least as she took home the FIRST PLACE Title and Trophy.

Carla now will be completing for the District 21 Title, at the Spring Conference in Harrison Hot Springs, May 11/12/13.  Go Carla, Go!!

As always, we are excited to see who will delight us with their next speech at this week’s meeting held at Vancore Toastmasters Downtown Club at the AME of BC offices located on the 8th floor of 889 West Pender Street (at the corner of Pender and Hornby)

Time is 3:15 PM sharp.