This week’s meeting opened with a warm welcome from our President, Abdulrahman. This was followed by the One World, Many Voices segment led by Toastmaster Tina Joe, who delivered a powerful message reflecting on Juneteenth. Key takeaways included that race continues to serve as a dividing line across the world, that silence allows harmful systems to persist unchallenged, and that pain and fear can deepen division.
Abdulrahman then briefly introduced the Bias Flag and explained its purpose. The Bias Flag serves as a tool our club uses to encourage inclusive and mindful language throughout our meetings.
The meeting was then turned over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Matthew, who reviewed the agenda and noted that we did not have a second speaker or the second speaker evaluator role filled. He also recognized one returning guest in attendance before leading a round of introductions, inviting members to share something they are looking forward to this weekend. Matthew introduced the Word of the Day, “MacGyver,” defined as “to make, form, or repair something with what is conveniently on hand,” and encouraged members to incorporate it throughout the meeting. With that, he guided us through an engaging and well-paced session.
We had one speaker this week. Toastmaster Kerstin delivered a speech titled “The Spotlight Is On, Speak Up, I Can’t Hear You,” in which she spoke about her passion for learning to advocate. Key takeaways included recognizing that identifying uncomfortable vulnerabilities helps us grow, using our voices to advocate for others, and learning to ask difficult questions.
Table Topics were led by Toastmaster Tim, who filled an extended session to make up for having only one speaker. Tim kept his questions aligned with the Word of the Day, presenting creative, scenario-based prompts such as: you are at a wedding and notice the cake about to fall, how would you fix it? Or, you are about to give a speech and realize your zipper is broken with no podium in front of you, what do you do? Additional questions explored what inventions may have resulted from someone trying to “MacGyver” a solution, embracing the reality that things do not always go as planned.
Next, we moved into our Breakfast of Champions segment, also known as Lunch or Dinner of Champions depending on your location, which focuses on evaluation and feedback. Toastmaster Yuko led the evaluation team, highlighting the impactful One World, Many Voices segment and the quote, “empathy over fear, humanity over hate.” Yuko also commended the extended Table Topics session for its creativity and engagement, noting that it was an overall well-executed meeting.
Speaker evaluation was delivered by Toastmaster Gulnara, who emphasized Kerstin’s strong storytelling and reinforced the message, “use your voice and advocate for others.” Gulnara also provided thoughtful recommendations for continued growth in future speeches. Toastmasters Summer and Lisa supported the meeting by serving as timer and grammarian, helping keep the meeting on track and monitoring filler words.
The meeting adjourned promptly at 7:59 AM EST, and we are already looking forward to next week’s meeting.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on June 26, 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 Shah
One World, Many Voices: Yuko Honda
Speaker 1: Danielle Benzon
Speaker 2: Matthew Choate
Table Topics: Diana Calmic
General Evaluator: Gulnara Askerova
Evaluator 1: Kenny Eniola
Evaluator 2: Sophie Wu
Timer: Open
