3rd Caribbean Toastmasters Conference

Curacao, October 2004

 

PR REPORT ON

Caribbean Territorial Council of Toastmasters’

Fall 2004 Conference

Held in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles,  October 29th – 31st, 2004

Hosted by the Netherlands Antilles Division of the CTCT

 The 3rd Conference of the Caribbean Territorial Council of Toastmasters (CTCT) was held in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles from October 29th to 31st, 2004 at the Breezes Curacao Resort. The theme for the conference was “Striving for Excellence”.

 

This conference was attended by 83 Toastmasters from 20 of the 41 member clubs.  The territories represented were, Barbados, Netherlands Antilles, Jamaica, St. Maarten and Trinidad & Tobago.

 The agenda for the conference followed the standard district conference and included, opening ceremony, reception, two speech contests, six educational sessions, business meeting, dinner and closing, training for area and division leaders, and executive board meeting.

 

Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony began with a colorful display of flag and playing of national anthems for all member territories followed by greetings from member territories represented. The audience was inspired to “build character and build strong communities through the Toastmasters movement” by feature speaker, Ms. Omayra Leeflury, Curacao’s Minister of Telecommunications. The folk dancing group Douchi Koursou, provided the evening’s entertainment.

  

Education Sessions

Six educational sessions were conducted at the conference.

  • The session on “Contest Rules and Judges Training” was conducted by DTM/PID Eileen Wolfe and covered duties and effective judging techniques, how to use the forms, preparing for a contest, and the rules for speech, humorous and evaluation contests.

  •  DTM/PID Ned Wallace in his session on “Taking the Terror out of the Talk” shared how to broaden our speaking experience, and using mental rehearsal and relaxation to minimize the fear.

  •  DTM/CC D’arcy Lopes shared tips and techniques on “Simple Steps to Shape a Speech” specially geared to the less experienced Toastmaster.

  •  The sessions on “Effective Debating” was delivered by Netherlands Antilles debating champion, ATM-B/CL Godalys Reina.  In her presentation ATM Reina explained the rules of debating and shared some techniques and practices for winning the war of words.

  •  The Jamaican duo of ATM-S/CL Paul Sharp and ATM-S/AL Robert Scott, gave invaluable information of effective practices for membership building and retention in their session entitled “Find them, Win them and Keep Them”.

  •  In her presentation on “Effective Evaluation”, DTM/PID Eileen Wolfe explained the how to give evaluations that benefit the speaker.

 Speech Contests

  • A Humorous and an Evaluations Contests were planned. As there was only one entrant who was from Curacao, the humorous contest was replaced by a demonstration contest. The two participants were with the first and second place winners from the Netherlands Antilles division, Mayela  Petrus and Sarak Castaneer. 

  • In the Evaluation contest, there were two contestants representing Trinidad & Tobago and Netherlands Antilles. This inaugural Evaluation contest was won by Garth Thomas of Trinidad & Tobago.

 Dinner & Closing

The Dinner was a grand affair, held at the Breezes Resort.  The keynote speaker, CTM. Sarah Wescott-Williams, Minister of Education, St. Maarten, challenged us to use our Caribbean experiences to the benefit of each other and to empower ourselves through education.

 

Business Meeting

Click here to read the minutes of the Business Meeting