Toastmasters of Waikanae, New Zealand

25/07/2026

We had a great night on Thursday despite the bitter cold 🥶

We had 3 prepared speeches. Nu regaled us with life his first career as a mechanic, Ronies talked about the amazing performance of Cape Verde in the recent World Cup, in particular that of their 40 year old keeper Vozinha. Finally Kelvin gave us a thoughtful speech about the similarities between the first (failed) Jamestown settlement in Virginia in the early 17th century and the proposed settlement on Mars. Rather than repeating the same mistake off world he challenged us to explore unforgiving parts of our planet to see if we can create liveable settlements for refugees.

This was followed by another set of Matariki inspired table topics (little impromptu speeches)

We try to award 3 trophies each meeting. Below we have Graham (as TT Evaluator) awarding me with the Best TT. I really treasured this as Table Topics still remains my bête noir 🤪 It falls to the General Evaluator to award Best Speech and Best Evaluation, so below we have Nick awarding the former to Kelvin and the latter to Graham.

If you would like to know more about how a toastmasters meeting works and what all the different roles mean, then come to a meeting. Our next meeting is on Thursday 13th August at 7.30. Feel free to message us for more info.

17/07/2026

If you are wanting to improve your public speaking skills then toastmasters is for you. We meet on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month from 7.30 - 9.30 at the Waikanae Arts and Crafts Rooms at 27a Elizabeth St. We are a small, friendly, supportive group of people that provide a safe environment for people to practice public speaking.

We had a busy meeting last week with 4 prepared speeches and a fun session of mini impromptu speeches (table topics in toastmaster parlance) on the theme of Matariki.

Below we have Neil presenting the best evaluation of the week award to Eva, the best speech of the week to Terence, while Eva gave me the best table topic of the week.

Feel free to join us for a meeting to see if we are the right fit for you. We love having guests.

17/03/2026

At our meeting last week, we had 3 prepared speeches, two of which were ice breakers, or stories about some aspect of a persons life. Yu told us all about what she had been up to in the 5 months since we saw her last, while Neil gave us a glimpse of what life was like growing up in Northland (Wellington) in the late 50s early 60s. On the other hand, Ian made us think about AI, something that should be in the back of all our minds I feel.

Katie gave us some great topics in the impromptu speaking part of the evening. We got to talk about our views on various recent legislative changes (or proposed legislative changes) such as anti-smacking, gang members having to wear patches in public, banning social media for those under 16 etc. They were topics that were both meaningful but about things everyone could get some kind of handle on.

Below are pics of our two winners of the night. Yu won the best speech award while Kelvin wion the table topic (impromptu speech) award.

Our next meeting is 26th March and we welcome visitors. Feel free to just rock up, and/or message us if you have any questions.

17/03/2026

This is a bit late but 4 weeks ago we had our second contest evening. We had 3 entrants in the ‘international speech’ contest and 5 entrants in the ‘evaluation’ contest. It is always fun to attend contest evenings and bear witness to those of us brave enough to stick their heads above the parapets (so to speak) 😄

Below we have pics of the winners. In the international speech contest Terence White was the winner and Kelvin de Ginder came second. Unfortunately the third speaker was disqualified for going over time. Speeches must be between 5.00 and 7.30 minutes long and, believe me, it is surprisingly difficult to speak within those constraints. However, its a good lesson to learn as I think we can all remember occasions when people have got carried away on a podium 😄 In this case it was only over by a second or two, but rules are rules.

In the evaluation contest, Terence White came first, Eva Petro second and Kelvin de Ginder third.

That concludes our contest evenings for another year.

08/02/2026

If you have a fear of public speaking then you are in good company because many people share this phobia and Toastmasters is a great way to help overcome it. The Waikanae branch meet on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month from 7.30 to 9.30, and we provide a very safe, friendly and supportive environment in which you can practise and grow your skills. After all, we’ve all been there ourselves.

This Thursday we have a competition evening which is a great opportunity to visit and get an idea of how we operate. There is no pressure to join and no expectation to stand up and speak. Feel free to message me for more details or just rock on up. We meet at the Waikanae Arts and Crafts Rooms at 27 Elizabeth St.

The photo below was taken at our last meeting and shows Nick presenting Kelvin with the weekly award for best table topic (short, impromptu) speech. Kelvin told us all about the first chimp who went into space and about the g-forces he experienced.

13/01/2026

Welcome to 2026 fellow toastmasters. Our first meeting this year is next week on 22 January.

And to everyone else - if one of your new year resolutions was to become a better public speaker then toastmasters is the place for you. Come on down and check us out. Message us for more info.

16/11/2025

We had another great meeting on Thursday night. It was quite a relaxed meeting, perhaps because we had quite a few apologies??

There were 3 prepared speeches and, as it happened, they were all very funny. David’s speech ‘Wellington laid bare’ was about a couple of times he had unexpectedly come across particularly sc****ly clad women while out and about in Wellington. Ian’s speech was his icebreaker. This is the first speech given by a new recruit and is an opportunity to introduce yourself. Ian talked mainly about what constituted fun when growing up in a tiny NZ settlement with few options. Nu took us back to the 1980s when he was an apprentice mechanic. It’s always fun to learn about what people got up to when they were young.

Table topics was led by Chris. This is the impromptu section of the meeting where people are invited up to talk for 1-2 minutes about a random topic with no opportunity to prepare. Thursday’s topics were related to bad things. What would you do if there was an earthquake etc.

I was the timekeeper. To be a good public speaker you need to learn not to outstay your welcome. To help with this we use lights. Every speaker is asked to speak within a range of times. For instance, most prepared speeches are 5-7 minutes. To help speakers know how much time they have left, the green light (shown here) will be turned on at 5 minutes, the orange at 6, and the red at 7. Speakers are required to wrap up within 30 secs of seeing the red light.

If you would like to improve your public speaking then come on down and check us out. We are a friendly supportive group and we love visitors. We meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month between 7.30 and 9.30 at the Arts and Crafts centre in Elizabeth St. Feel free to message, or phone me for more info.

03/10/2025

Last week we had our second contest evening. Up for grabs were the Best Table Topic and Best Humerous Speech awards. We are only a small club and don’t usually muster a large number of contestants, so we were delighted to welcome 4 contestants for table topics and 3 for the humerus speech.

Our table topic for the evening was ‘Has social media brought us closer together or pushed us further
apart?’ Each speaker had to respond with no time to prepare an answer and without hearing the responses of previous contestants. In this instance, all contestants were experienced toastmasters and responded very ably. The winner on the night was Kelvin, with Eva second and Terence third (see picture 1).

The 3 humerous speeches were all brilliant. David gave a very clever and funny speech about long words, and impressed us all by being able to rattle off some truly long words including the longest maori place name in NZ. Terence hilariously described a recent visit to get a cut throat shave in Edinburgh which, to his surprise, ended up including the removal of nose and ear hairs using wax - an experience not for the faint hearted. Finally we had Kelvin who gave us a very physical speech, reenacting an amusing incident that occurred many years ago when he was a newly qualified doctor and part of a team called to attend to a man who had collapsed at a raucous, dodgy, local party. I’m glad I wasn’t judging this one because I’d have struggled to choose a winner. In the end, Terence got the top spot with David second and Kelvin third (see photo 2).

Our two winners will go on to represent the club at the next level of the toastmasters contests and we wish them well in their endeavours.

Our next meeting is Thursday 9th October at 7.30. We love having visitors so come along and check us out if you would like to find out more about toastmasters. ou

12/09/2025

We had our first September meeting last night. It was on the small side (as winter meetings can sometimes be, what with illnesses and holidays) but it was still a goodie. We were very pleased to welcome two guests (Manuel and Ian).

We had 3 prepared speeches. Ronies picked a very topical story and spoke about Tom Phillips who, after hiding in the bush with his 3 children for the last 4 years, was shot and killed two days ago. It’s a knarly and complex story but Ronies provided an insightful summary and also included his viewpoint.

Next Terence, having recently toured a Scottish distillery, talked about the process of making whisky 😋Finally, Eva showed us photos of her recent holiday in Niue, which a few of us have now added to our bucket lists.

In the impromptu part of the meeting, Ronies (our table topics master), set us some interesting questions such as - ‘what would your dream job be if money was no object’, and ‘how would you spend 24 hours if you had no responsibilities’. This last topic went to one of our guests (Manuel), who very cleverly included a trip to Niue in his answer.

Neil was both our table topics evaluator and general evaluator, and awarded the table topic of the day to Manuel and the speech of the day to Ronies (see pics below).

I’d particularly like to thank Ronies, Neil and Terence, who all volunteered for multiple roles tonight. Without you guys, the agenda would have looked much more makeshift.

Our next meeting is in two weeks and is a contest evening, it’s a great meeting to come to if you are interested in seeing what we are about.

24/07/2025

I had to share this. I think it is brilliant.

Demystifying Toastmasters #5: TOO AMERICAN FOR US KIWIS?

Many Kiwis think Toastmasters is all about rah-rah American enthusiasm.

AMERICAN MISCONCEPTIONS DEBUNKED:
• NO, you don't need to salute the flag before speaking 🇺🇸
• NO, we don't high-five after every sentence ✋
• NO, we don't use baseball analogies (we barely understand cricket) ⚾

THE GLORIOUSLY KIWI REALITY:
• Feedback is delivered with classic Kiwi diplomacy: "Yeah, nah, that was good" 👍
• We bond over complaining about the weather and Aucklanders
• We celebrate with a cuppa and a biscuit 🍪
• We downplay achievements with "it was alright, I guess" 🤷

COME ALONG!
When: First and third Thursday of the month
Where: Johnsonville Bowling Club
What to bring: Your natural Kiwi modesty and maybe some biscuits
Enthusiasm level: Appropriately restrained 📊

CHURTON PARK TOASTMASTERS: KEEPING IT SWEET AS SINCE 2015 ✅