One of the first things I did as a new Area Governor was check the list of officers trained so far since June.
If you’re an officer of a Toastmasters club, you know that Toastmasters International encourages club officers to go to training every six months, by giving one full point (10% of the points available) in the Distinguished Club Program to clubs who send at least four officers to training in June/July/August and then have at least four officers trained in December/January/February.
When I checked the list, I discovered that two of the clubs in my Area had not been able to send four officers to training, and also discovered that my home club had only gotten two officers trained as well.
Last November, I had reserved a meeting room at the Austin Public Library for the use of my home club on the third Monday of each month. Our club had decided not to use the room, but I hadn’t given up hope that we would have an opportunity to make use of it – perhaps as a venue for practicing PowerPoint or whiteboard presentations.
Since club officer training has to be completed by August 31st, I contacted the Division K governor and suggested we organize a make up training on August 20th. After a few days, we had a training set up – the Division K Governor and I set up the training, and the Division L Governor was the actual training presenter.
We got 22 officers trained, including two more from my home club, but none of the clubs in Area K52 were able to send more officers to this training.
The clubs that were represented at training:
| Club Name | # of officers at training |
|---|---|
| AGLCC Toastmasters | 2 |
| Armadillo Avenue Toastmasters | 1 |
| Austin IBM | 1 |
| Austin Project Management | 1 |
| Austin Toastmasters | 1 |
| Austintatious | 1 |
| Central Austin Toastmasters | 2 |
| Cirrus Noise Canceller | 1 |
| DPS Toastmasters | 2 |
| iToast | 2 |
| Lifeworks Toastmasters | 1 |
| Lone Star | 1 |
| METstirs | 1 |
| One Texas Toast | 2 |
| UT Staff Toastmasters | 4 |