CLUB NO: 4533866, RUN BY: ICC EVES TOASTMASTERS

Why Join?

​

Congratulations on taking the first step to helping your child become a better communicator and leader by joining the ICC Eves Gavel Club for the year 2019-2020!

​

For those of you who are new to the gavel club, the ICC Eves Gavel Club was formed in 2015 by Toastmaster Susan Mathew, who is part of the ICC Eves Toastmaster Club. The gavel club is a part of Toastmasters International and children between the ages of 12 years and 18 years are entitled to be members of the gavel club. Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization headquartered in USA that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication and leadership skills by providing a structured educational path and manuals.

 

How is the Gavels Club useful to your child?

 

The gavel club is run to help children develop their communication and leadership skills by completing speeches and roles within club meetings. The objective of the gavel club is to help children develop essential soft skills at an early age to ensure that they are successful as adults in their personal and professional life. A study performed by Pew Research Center asked adults worldwide to select the single skill which is most important for children to succeed in the world and 90% of respondents selected Communication as their answer. To put it simply, interpersonal communication skills are more important than intelligence and academic grades in the business world. The gavel club hopes to get children ready to succeed in the outside world through great communication skills.

​

Workplace skills such as organization, planning, listening and punctuality are easily learned and adopted by children when they perform the different gavel club meeting roles such as the role of grammarian, listener, ah counter, Toastmaster of The Day, Table Topics Master, etc. Children develop their impromptu speaking skills through the table topics session where topics are given on the spot, and children are expected to speak on the topic for a minute or two without prior preparation. For those children who are interested in honing their leadership and team work skills, the gavel club elects seven members into the Executive Committee (Excom) to be the President, VP Education, VP Membership, VP Public Relations, Secretary, Treasurer, and Sergeant at arms. The excom members are encouraged to plan well, work together as a team, to learn the use of software tools needed for their job, and to execute their roles with as much zest and creativity as possible.

 

GAVEL CLUB AWARDS:

 

In addition to the regular gavel club meetings, we also have some new standards/processes to enhance the learning.

​

1. Awards for gaveliers who are working towards communication and leadership goals - We have put together a list of awards that the gaveliers can compete for, in addition to our annual speech contest awards.

 

Support needed from parents;

​

In order to ensure that your child receives maximum benefit from this program, we require the following support from the parents:

 

1. Regular attendance for club meetings:

Our gavel club has always been kept to a maximum of 30 - 35 members and four counselors to ensure that we provide focused attention on a smaller group, but in the past months, we have had trouble running regular meetings due to the irregularity in attendance from gaveliers. I would like to enforce the guideline that every member should have at least 60% attendance in each term, i.e., every member should attend at least 6 out of the 10 meetings during six months (Sept-Jan and Feb-June). For those members who don’t meet this 60% attendance criteria, the membership will not be renewed for the next term since the member is really not gaining much from the program. This will also allow us to recruit new members who are eager to attend and can benefit fully from the program.

 

Parents, please understand that this guideline for attendance is being enforced to ensure that your children really benefit from this program and to ensure that the special programs put together with a lot of effort from volunteers are not missed by children. In the past, it has also come to our attention that the children who attend regularly are the ones who have shown a marked improvement in communication and leadership. These meetings are a great learning experience filled with fun and will help your child perform better both at school and at home.

 

2. Completing Speeches:

 

It has come to our attention that many gaveliers choose roles primarily instead of completing speeches. To motivate children to complete speeches, we will be conducting a series of educational modules. We need your support by helping to motivate children to write and deliver speeches. As a guideline, we would like every child to attempt one speech at least once in two months. In addition, please try and encourage children to write their own speeches to enhance their writing skills. We discourage parents from writing the speeches for children to ensure that children learn to develop their ideas and become excellent writers in the process.

 

We hope that as parents, you will provide your full cooperation by encouraging your children to attend frequently and complete speeches in addition to role plays. Please help us make your children confident communicators and leaders.

 

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email at tm.bindusingh@gmail.com or contact the counselor by phone at 66027207.