Years ago (decades actually), I heard of Toastmasters and all I knew was that it is a forum to practice public speaking. I was curious and decided to check out a meeting. The meeting took place in an office building nearby, and it was just a general Toastmasters meeting (no theme to it).
The basic format of a Toastmasters meeting is as follows:
There are some formalities as the meeting begins including an introduction of functionaries which are performed by members. These functionaries include:
🌿 A timer: each segment has guidelines for how long the speaking lasts. The timer tracks this. The biggest reason to stay within the timing guidelines is if you ever participate in a speaking competition, you must stay within the timed parameters. Thus, these same parameters are practiced during the regular meetings.
🌿 An “ah” counter: This person listens for filler words like um, ah, like, you know, etc.
🌿 A grammarian. This person offers a “word of the day” which people get to try and work into their speaking. The grammarian also listens for egregious grammatical errors but also for interesting or clever word or phrase usage.
The rest of the meeting is broken up into three parts:
First — there’s a section called Table Topics during which a member (the Table Topics Master) suggests a few topics and then members and guests have an opportunity to speak extemporaneously for 1-2 minutes on the subject.
Second — there are prepared speeches which are generally delivered by members and last around 5 minutes.
Third — there are formal evaluations of the speeches. Following the speech evaluations, the functionaries give their reports.
This, of course, is a very rough overview of a Toastmasters meeting, and each club runs a little differently.
Anyway, I think I joined and gave a speech back then, but wasn’t inspired to stick around.
Fast forward to sometime around 2014 when I was vegetarian. I was poking around online — maybe looking for a Toastmasters meeting. I can’t remember. But I noticed that there was a Vegan Toastmasters meeting near me. Even though I was not yet vegan, I was curious and attended as a guest.
The topics and speeches, as you may have guessed, are generally (though not solely) vegan or plant-based themed, or a combination of both.
I really enjoyed Vegan Toastmasters, joined, and (oopsie) once again, didn’t last too long in the club because the meeting times conflicted with my kids’ activities.
Once my kids were no longer playing soccer on the weekends and needing me to drive them everywhere, I found the club and joined (again) in 2019. Lest I forget, our meetings also included a small potluck with shared vegan snacks during the break. Yum… Snacks.
By 2019 I was already vegan and even more passionate about spreading the word.
The Vegan Toastmasters club is a wonderful compassionate group of people who wish to speak more cogently and vociferously for the animals. (Thanks, Vegan Jyoti for that.).
Of course, the pandemic hit in 2020 and we quickly shifted our meeting from in-person in Los Angeles to Zoom.
The bad news: No more potluck snacks.
The good news: We are able to reach people all around the world.
And, when you’ve been hanging out with people twice a month for a couple of hours, they really do become friends- even if you’ve never met in person.
If you would like to attend one of our meetings, please join us. There’s no pressure to speak (other than introducing yourself at the beginning of the meeting) or join. You may simply observe. Guests are welcome to attend as many times as you’d like at no charge. And membership costs are reasonable.
We have a wide range of people who join as guests and potentially become members. Some are curious about going plant-based, others are moving toward a vegan lifestyle, and some are already completely plant-based or vegan and looking to spend more time with people who speak about these subjects.
Vegan Toastmasters meets the 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month at 3 pm PT/ 6 pm ET for 1 hour and 45 minutes. (And yes, we still do have a short break, though it’s no longer a potluck.)
Please join us. We’d love to meet you there!
p.s- a big shoutout to Toastmaster Dave for forming this club a gazillion years ago and keeping it running for this whole time. We are all grateful.