What is a Toastmaster Club?

A Toastmasters Club is a worldwide non-profit educational organization where people can learn the skills of public speaking and leadership. There are currently 211,000 members in more than 10,500 clubs meeting in approximately 90 countries from a variety of occupations and backgrounds who participate in this activity to obtain better communication skills.
In Japan, there are around 80 clubs, and its activity is rapidly growing to reflect the needs of today's international society.
Osaka Toastmasters Club was established in 1981, and many people from different backgrounds participate in this activity and enjoy "learning by doing" every 2nd and 4th Wednesday at Umeda.

What Benefits Toastmasters Membership provides?

• Learn and practice techniques of effective public speaking.
• Prepare and deliver formal speeches on subjects of their own choosing.
• Give impromptu talks on assigned topics.
• Gain speaking experience that relates to specific career needs.
• Sharpen their listening/evaluation skills.
• Learn proper parliamentary procedures.
• Preside as a meeting chairman.
• Gain valuable leadership management experience.
• Gain personal confidence that will help when spaking to one person or one thousand.
• Enter Toastmasters International's Annual Speech Contest, "The World Championship of Public Speaking."
• Enjoy meeting people, listening to their speeches and socializing with them

What is a Toastmasters' Meeting Like?

Our regular meeting is mainly consisted of impromptu speech session, formal speech session, and evaluation session.
In impromptu speech session, members present one to two minutes impromptu speeches on assigned topics.
In formal speech session, three or more members present prepared speeches based on projects from the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Program manuals. Projects cover such topics as speech organization, voice, language gestures, and persuasion.
In evaluation session, every prepared speaker is assigned an evaluator who points out speech strengths and offers suggestions for improvement.

Speech Contests

Toastmasters offers several different speech contests you may participate in, either as a contestant or as an official. Even if you are not interested in participating, you can learn just by observing the contest. The biggest contest is the Annual International Speech Contest, which culminates the contest finals held during the Toastmasters International Convention in August.