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THE VOICE OF CTC QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF COROMANDEL TOASTMASTERS CLUB - Vol 1, Issue 8 - Dec’2015

WHERE LEADERS ARE MADE 3075300

Coromandel

Toastmasters Club

Where do we meet?

We meet at Valluvar Guru-

kulam School, 220, GST

Road, Tambaram, Chen-

nai—600045

When do we meet?

Every Saturday from 4.15 PM to 6.15 PM

Directions to the Venue

1. From Tambaram Rail-

way Station and Bus sta-

tion :

Move along the Tambaram

station towards Tambaram

Sanatorium and on the

left, after crossing bus

stand, you will find the

CTC meeting venue

2. From Tambaram Sana-

torium Railway Station :

Take the West Tambaram

side and walk along the

GST. You will find the school

on your right.

Club Announcements

Book your speech slots

Cal l Mr . Raman @ 9841068801 to book your speech and role player slots.

A glimpse of the newsletter

Front Liner’s Voices - Page 2 - 5

Mission of Toastmasters Clubs

Voice of the Editorial Team

Voice of the President

Voice of Division Director

Updates Page 6

Voice of DTM

Voice of Members of CTC Page 7– 10

Messages from members of CTC

Club Hall of fames Page 11– 15

Special Events & Special meetings

Distinguished Club Program Status Page 16

Take a look at CTC’s performance in Distinguished Club Program

Contact us at: coromandeltoastmastersclub@gmail.com

Our Website: http://coromandeltc.in

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

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MISSION OF TOASTMASTERS CLUBS

HISTORY

How it started?

In 1924, Ralph C. Smedley held the first toastmasters meeting in a basement in YMCA in Santa Ana, Califor-nia.

When i t became

“International” ?

Toastmasters became Toastmasters Interna-tional after a speaking club in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, ex-pressed interest in joining the organization.

TOASTMASTERS -

TODAY

How big is Toastmas-

ters International to-

day?

As of today, there are 3,13,000 memberships in more than 14,650 clubs in 126 countries

Who can join Toastmas-

ters?

Anyone over the age of 18 can join Toastmasters, pro-vided they have the desire to improve their communication and leadership skills.

Toastmasters is also a per-fect platform for networking with people.

Toastmasters International (TMI) is a non-profit educational organization

that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members to improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. Through its thou-sands of member clubs, Toastmasters International offers a program of commu-nication and leadership projects designed to help people learn the arts of speak-ing, listening, and thinking.

A Toastmasters club adopts a “learn-by-doing” philosophy, wherein each mem-ber learns at a pace suitable to his or her developmental needs. The Toastmas-ters program is divided into two separate tracks, communication and leadership, with members progressing along each track by presenting speeches and taking on roles within their club, district and Toastmasters International itself.

Toastmasters International Mission

We empower individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders.

Coromandel Toastmasters Club is a fairly new Toastmasters community

club in Chennai, Tamilnadu. Coromandel Toastmasters Club (CTC) is situated in Tambaram and helps aspiring Leaders and Communicators in South Chennai in developing their personal and professional skills. Currently there are 40 members in the club.

Coromandel Toastmasters Club’s Mission

We provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills, resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.

To Join Us Contact

Karunakaran - VP Membership

Mobile No: +91 8939803042; Email: coromandeltoastmastersclub@gmail.com

About Toastmasters International

About Coromandel Toastmasters Club (CTC)

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.— A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

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VOICE OF THE EDITORIAL TEAM

Coromandel Toastmasters Club has infused a dose of creativity and ex-

pressiveness into the lives of many professional and aspiring engineers

who reside in vast numbers in the ‘Detroit of India’ thanks to the high den-

sity of automobile companies in the southern part of the city.

Note of Thanks

This is our second news letter in this Toastmaster year. Editorial team

has taken best efforts to release this news letter.

Special thanks to our beloved DTM Jayan Narayanan, Yuva Raju Direc-

tor, Division -B, to spare their time to write the articles for this news let-

ter..

Many thanks to members of CTC, Sundaresan, Subramani, Velmurugan

Raman, Satish, Harikrishnan who spent their time and efforts to contribute

to the articles for this edition.

Many thanks to Subramani & Raman for their Editorial Role.

Special thanks to Satish, for being part of Editorial team as proof reader.

Many thanks to the Editorial team of the previous edition of the newsletter

for setting the agenda for the newsletter and creating a format to be fol-

lowed to ensure consistency in the subsequent editions.

Also, a special mention to all the new members who shared their thoughts

and the changes in their professional lives through Toastmasters.

Happy Reading!

Subramani S

Editor

Raman K

Editor

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves— Ray Kroc

Satish

Proof Reader

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TM Velmurugan, CL

President, Coromandel

Toastmasters Club

Velmurugan is a Chartered

Accountant by profession

and is working in Future

Focus Infotech P Ltd as

Senior Manager Finance.

He is a member of CTC

since it was chartered. He

was Introduced by DTM La-

litha Giridhar to CTC.

He is the winner in club level

Humorous Speech Contest

for the last 2 consecutive

years.

Main focus

It is time to focus on the

quality and standards of club

meeting and at the same

time, providing a friendly

environment for all the mem-

bers to improve their skills.

We will focus to keep our

meetings simple, fun filled

and a great place for learn-

ing & development. We will

also ensure active participa-

tion of every CTC member.

We are sure this will improve

attendance in the long run.

VOICE OF THE PRESIDENT

On the completion of this successful term, I thank everybody for giving me an opportunity to serve Coromandel Toastmasters Club (CTC) as the President.

Now we are seeing the CTC marching towards the elite club status with high standards in meetings.

The number of members has reached 38 in the month of December’15 and has been growing steadily.

This year, we witnessed larger participation of our members in the club

contests. This shows the energy level and interest of members.

In the recent Humorous and Evaluation contests, 19 contestants partici-

pated. Karunakaran won the 1st runner up in Division level and Velmuru-

gan S won the 2nd runner up in Humorous speech contest in Area level,

Jo Srinivasan won the 1st runner up in Evaluation contest in the Area

level, and Karunakaran & Jo Srinivasan represented our club in Division

level.

Another big chunk of members are preparing to participate in the upcom-ing International speech and Table topic contests. We are sure CTC would produce more winners in all the levels.

CTC is continuously introducing innovative and interesting ideas in the

club meetings to make the meetings more interesting and fun filled. Dur-

ing the past 6 months, we have successfully conducted 7 special meet-

ings.

We have convened 3 Joint meetings. One with Area B2 clubs, one with

Area B1 clubs in our club venue and another Joint meeting with Ocean’s

Toastmasters Club of division G.

We organized Halloween day special meeting and Deepavali special

meeting with lots of innovative ideas and with imperishable memories. We

also have successfully organized the first outdoor meeting of CTC at

Golden Bay Resort in OMR. During this period, we also celebrated our

125th milestone meeting with more innovative and fun filled events.

During the 6 months of our tenure, we have organized 7 education ses-

sions to help our members to improve their skills.

Our club has become a Select Distinguished Club and achieved 6 DCP

out of 10 by Dec’2015 for this Toastmaster year. We hope to reach 10

points by Feb’2016 and would become President Distinguished Club. We

have achieved the Smedley Award for the year 2015-16. We hope we

would also achieve Golden Gavel award for this year as we have

achieved all the required criteria till now. Once again, I thank everyone for

their efforts and continuous support for all the achievements.

TM Velmurugan, CL

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today - H. Jackson Brown , Jr.

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VOICE OF DIVISION B DIRECTOR

When Opportunity Knocks....

How many times we say YES to our VP Education, when he asks

us to do a role at the last minute?

How many time we say YES to our Boss in the office, when he

gives us an opportunity to lead?

How many times we say YES, when someone gives us an opportu-

nity which we always wanted?

Every time someone throws opportunity towards, us the initial reaction within us will be -

Am I capable of doing it?

I am not prepared?

What if I take it and fail?

We all want to play safe. I also wanted to play safe and always said NO to the opportunities which came my way until one day, a casual talk with my mentor TM Arun Sridhar, changed my thought process and I got my big-gest learning of my life.

I got an opportunity to be the Conference Chair for one of our Combined Toastmasters conference and I was reluctant to take the opportunity as I felt I was not ready and was not sure if I was capable. I went to my mentor and spoke to him about my situation. After listening to me patiently, he said “Yuva, no one is prepared in this world and the best way to im-prove yourself is by accepting opportunity and going through the process of learning”. Adding to that, he said “When opportunity knocks welcome it and open the Doors”. This was my Learning Point to say YES to opportunities coming my way. I accepted to be the Confer-ence Chair and gave my best and broke the shackles which I had created for myself by saying NO to opportunities.

Recently we had our Division B OTP held on 10th January,2016 at CSC MEPZ and we had our Area Directors Presentation. Two of our Area Di-rectors could not make it and in the last moment that opportunity was given to TM Tamil Illakia (Coromandel TM Club) and TM Chaitanya (Ford Chennai TM Club). They accepted the opportunity and did their best. I am sure they have taken one more step forward in the process of improving themselves.

So, fellow Toastmasters, the next time when your VP Education asks you to do a role or the boss in your office gives an Opportunity say YES and give your best. The only way to grow and improve yourself is to say YES to the opportunity coming your way.

Thank you TM Velmurugan and Coromandel Toastmasters club for the opportunity to write an article for the club newsletter and I have said a Big YES to the opportunity.

Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident. - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Yuva Raju is currently the

Division Director of Division

B, District 82, Toastmasters

International. A sincere and

committed Toastmaster for

several years, whose guid-

ance and leadership benefit-

ted several other Toastmas-

ters. He is also the Founder

& Principal Consultant in

Prodigy Recruitment Consult-

ants.

TM Yuva Raju, ALB, ACB

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DTM Jayan Narayanan is a

District Evaluations Champion

and a much sought after Edu-

cation Speaker. He is also the

Chair for Ovations 2016, the

prestigious Annual Confer-

ence of District 82. He is a

member of Coromandel

Toastmasters Club.

Jayan is the Managing Part-

ner at Toss the Coin. He is a

graduate from BITS, PILANI

and a member of Toastmas-

ters International since 2008.

VOICE OF DTM

Why did I join Toastmasters?

I joined toastmasters because my spouse felt I badly needed to improve my communication skills to be able to survive in this ever competitive corporate world. Yes, there was someone around me who was con-cerned about my survival in the corporate world and sincerely felt that Toastmasters could help me. So, who was it in your case? Was it some-one around you or it was just you? I often ask this question to the toastmasters and sometimes I get very disturbed by certain answers. Quite a few have told me that they were-n't all that keen but were persuaded by their supervisors to join Toastmasters. So, when one feels that there is no immediate need to develop one's communi-cation skills then there is a s t r o n g d i s c o n n e c t . In my experience as a Toast-master for the last ten years, I have seen several toastmasters who have immensely benefited f r o m i t j u s t f o r t h e mere reason that it was their personal decision to improve themselves. These Toastmas-ters have an enviable passion towards the effort they take to better themselves each time they pick up a role or deliver a speech. On the other hand those who were pushed by someone else were lagging behind. Of course there are some exceptions on both sides. Once in, there is no looking back. Every week you are attending the session to experiment. To try something new that you haven't done earlier and that something could be as trivial as a body language that you may want to correct. Do not go there to be what you already are. Then complacency sets in and you will never be able to better yourself. While you doing all these remember to polish your English the rest of time. This is your undeclared homework. Learn a word, Learn new ways of constructing sentences, correct your grammar, try various ways to construct a sentence and pick the one that is most simple and at t h e s a m e t i m e d e l i v e r s t h e m e s s a g e . Eventually you are your own evaluator. Spend some quality time end of every moth doing a dip stick. Find out where you were and where you are now. If the graph is moving north eastward direction then you are on the right track. keep it going !!!

DTM Jayan Narayanan

Nothing is impossible, word itself says “ I’am possible’ - Audrey Hepburn

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TM Velmurugan, CL

Velmurugan is a Chartered

Accountant by profession and

he is working in Future Focus

Infotech P Ltd as Senior Man-

ager, Finance.

He is a member of CTC since

it is chartered and he was In-

troduced by DTM Lalitha Girid-

har to CTC.

He is the winner in Club level

Humorous Speech Contest for

the last 2 consecutive years.

VOICE OF MEMBERS

Toastmaster means helping others

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learnt—Albert Einstein

Now-a-days, helping others and being charitable is becoming every-one’s interest. We saw this interest during the recent flood as many people were helping needed people in some way.

Generally majority of people are willing to help others but we don't go beyond thinking. Many times when we cross a needed person, we do think to do something, but for some reason, we did not help them. We just cross them with the guilty feeling.

The reason is we think that we have limitations with respect to our rou-tine life, job, economical position and our family circumstances. We are not free and open to extend our help because we are as shy as in public speaking

When we enter into the Toastmasters, these habits are inculcated gradually. Apart from developing our communications and leadership skills, we are helping our fellow members develop the same. We are giving a positive evaluation to other members, encouraging others, mentoring, sharing mutual thoughts, working for club improvements, extending all these benefits to other club members.

Many activities we do here are in the nature of helping others in some way. It makes us to develop helping tendency, makes us to do more charity and we start helping others freely inside and outside the Toast-masters. This was evident from the fact, as we had seen many toast-masters helping the needed people individually or with the toastmasters groups during the Chennai floods. As a regular toastmaster, you can feel yourself being improved in helping others. Are you Toastmasters?

TM Velmurugan, CL

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Sundaresan is the secretary

of CTC. He is an IT profes-

sional and working as Asso-

ciate Director in Cognizant

Technologies.

VOICE OF MEMBERS

Lessons from Chennai flood

If opportunity doesn’t knock , build a door - Milton berle

There is a very famous saying “Chennai is a city, but Madras is an

emotion” – It was proved during the heavy rains & floods in Chennai on

Dec 1st week.

Top 10 lessons all of us learnt during this crisis:

● Kids and students who have not gone to school and colleges due to

the long leaves but they ran out to help and learnt their best lessons

of their life

● People had witnessed Power of Army while they recovered a preg-

nant lady using helicopter

● A few Movie heroes became real heroes

● Weakest person started helping the strongest

● Nobody talked about caste during staying together at community

place or waiting at terrace for 2 days or while distributing essentials

or travelling together in a rescue boat

● The Muslims cleaned a Hindu temple in Kotturpuram, Hindus/

Christians staying at Mosques, Jains distributing foods for everyone

etc.

● Social Media had turned overnight into a powerful tool which saved

thousands of lives

● Husbands who have never seen their own kitchens can sit for days

in community kitchens without a single complaint and still be happy

● The strongest of gates of homes got opened without any request

● Toastmasters Club Members were on the rescue mission which

proved TM’s care for society

I am sure these lessons won’t fade away from the current generation memo-

ries which would help to build a stronger society.

TM Sundaresan Moorthy

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Raman is Vibrant and en-

ergetic member of CTC.

He is the partner at 3C

Engineering and he is

serving as VP Education.

He has set a high standard

to make the meeting ener-

getic and fun filled and

maintaining the same for

every meeting.

VOICE OF MEMBERS

When I joined Toastmasters in May 2014 my aim was only to improve

communication skills. I started giving speeches and became part of the

executive committee. Apart from communication my improved leadership

skills. This club is very close to my heart for many reasons. Above all

one quality is predominant in this club which makes me to come every

week that is club members are very friendly. Everyone is ready to help

each other. One month ago we had club outdoor meeting. I thoroughly

enjoyed every minute of the day. Now Coromandel toastmasters club is

place where I share with my friends about communication, work, family

and I get suggestions . It is pleasure to meet my friends every week. We

need to keep this culture going for ever.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something—Thomas Huxley

TM Raman

TM Raman

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TM Harikrishnan P

Harikrishnan P works for IBM

as Linux System Administra-

tor. He has 7+ Years of experi-

ence in Linux system admin

and over all 13 Years experi-

ence in IT Industry. He had

previously worked for leading

companies like Mphasis, EDS.

Harikrishnan P is an Engineer-ing graduate from University of Madras. He is a member of Coromandel toastmasters club since October 2015 .

VOICE OF MEMBERS

Change your thoughts and you change your world - Norman Vincent peale

First of all, I thank everybody for giving me an opportunity to serve Coro-mandel Toastmasters Club (CTC) as the SAA.

From my childhood itself , I was very bad in communicating in English. I was very nervous , shy and had hesitation to speak with people, our manager & client.

Even I had skipped our weekly team meeting so many times due to fear of speaking. I never ever attended our corporate Town Hall meeting. Al-ways escaping and sitting in dark room to hide myself from people.

I was noticed by our Manager for my bad communications skill. I was annoyed and depressed. I decided to break the communication road block which has always been stopping me to move to the next level.

Hence I had discussion with my friend R.Kanagaraj, who advised me to join any of the Toastmasters club to develop communication and leader-ship skills.

After long pause, I had joined Coromandel toastmasters club on October 2015 with fear, shy & hesitation.

Big thanks to TM Raman & TM Velmurugan who helped me to join this club. Being in Coromandel Toastmasters Club is an exotic journey and it provides plenty of opportunity to its members. I can really feel that mo-mentum after joining this club.

In this club, every member is providing a positive & supportive approach and helping others to develop their skills. I never ever seen such a club to be so friendly in my career. I myself can feel comfortable now.

I have improved my communication skills a little bit and have gained con-fidence that I can speak/conduct meeting with Team, Manager & clients with help of CTC boat and vessels of members.

Still a long way to go. There are many people like me still outside of Toastmasters. We will bring them into toastmasters and make them enjoy the benefits of toastmasters. Let’s grow together.

I am a proud member of CTC.

Thanks to Coromandel toastmasters club and my beloved friends of CTC.

TM Harikrishnan

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CTC HALL OF FAME

Presence of Area Directors

Area B2– Subhadip Bhanik Area B1 - SanthanaLakshmi

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is— Vince Lambardi

Halloween Day special Meeting

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CTC HALL OF FAME

Believe you can and you’re halfway there - Theodore Roosevelt

CTC’s 1st Outdoor Meeting - Celebrations

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CTC HALL OF FAME

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light - Aristotle

Deepawali Special Meeting

New Club officers Installation—Jan’2016

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CTC HALL OF FAME

What you do today can improve all your tomorrow’s - Ralph Marston

125 Milestone Meeting

CTC HALL OF FAME

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CTC HALL OF FAME

The Secret of getting ahead is getting started - Mark Twain

CTC HALL OF FAME

CTC Joint Meeting with Ocean Toastmasters Club

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EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

President

TM Velmurugan S

velmail2003@yahoo.com

Vice President Education

TM Raman K

Vice President - Membership

TM Ramkumar

Vice President - Public Relations

TM Deepak

Secretary

TM Ragini

Treasurer

TM Senthilkumar

Sergeant at Arms

TM Karunakaran

Details of club

Toastmasters international

Visit our own facebook Page—CTC

h t t p s : / / w w w . f a c e b o o k . c o m /

Coromandeltc/

Visit our own Website

http://coromandeltc.in/

We now accept articles for our next edition!

Send your articles to

coromandeltoastmastersclub@gmail.com

CTC’s Distinguished Club Program (DCP) Status

The Distinguished Club Program by Toastmasters International helps the

clubs to promote equality, ensure productive meetings, provide structure

and guidance and increase the enthusiasm of the club. The DCP in-

cludes 10 goals which a club should strive to achieve each year.

A club receives the status of

Distinguished Club - 5 of 10 goals are met

Select Distinguished Club - 7 of 10 goals are met

President’s Distinguished Club - 9 of 10 goals are met

DCP requirements and CTC’s status—as on 30th Janu-

ary 2016

Requirements achieved by CTC are highlighted in Green

In target for next 3 months are highlighted in Blue

1. Two Competent Communicators

2. Two More Competent Communicators

3. One ACB, ACS or ACG

4. One more ACB, ACS or ACG

5. One CL, ALB, ALS or DTM

6. One more CL, ALB, ALS or DTM

7. Four new members

8. Four more new members

9. Four officers trained at each COT

10. Membership renewal and Club Officer list submitted on time

We are moving towards President Distinguished Club!

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way— John C Maxwell