This week’s meeting began with a warm welcome from our President, Abdulrahman, followed by the One World, Many Voices segment led by Adnan. He spoke about struggles in Bangladesh, where simply asking a question on social media can lead to disappearing without a trace. He left us with powerful advice: “Don’t take your freedom of speech for granted.” Abdulrahman quickly introduced the bias flag before handing the meeting over to Toastmaster of the Day, Chang Yu.
Chang Yu led a quick round of introductions where people were asked one thing they would be disciplined about this year, then he presented the Word of the Day, discipline, tying it to New Year’s resolutions that may have drifted off track. He then guided us through a well‑run and engaging meeting.
We had one speaker today. Toastmaster Kehinde (Kenny) delivered a speech titled “Most Embarrassing Moment of My Life.” Kenny recounted a frightening experience when her 4‑year‑old son had a seizure at daycare, prompting her to scale a fence like Spider‑Woman in her rush to reach him. A memorable quote from her speech was: “Life doesn’t wait for us to be gracefully composed.”
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Summer and did not follow a specific theme. She offered a series of general, thought‑provoking questions. This was an extended Table Topics session that filled the time normally reserved for the second speaker and evaluator. A few of the standout questions included: “What is the worst job you’ve ever had?”, “If you decided to go on a spiritual journey, where would you go and what would you do?”, and “What is your most treasured photograph?”
Next, we moved into our Breakfast of Champions—speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Abigayle led our evaluation team today, with speaker evaluation from Toastmaster Tina Joe. Toastmaster Sophie and Toastmaster Tim kept us honest today by timing our speeches and marking down our filler words. Abigayle then turned the meeting back over to Abdulrahman to wrap up and officially adjourn the meeting.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on March 20, EST. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Syed Imran A. Shah
One World Many Voices: Open
Speaker 1: Yuko Honda
Speaker 2: Matthew Choate
Table Topics: Chang Yu
General Evaluator: Open
Evaluator 1: Stiles Burr
Evaluator 2: Tina Joe
Timer: Kerstin Haase
Grammarian: Abdullahi Hussein
