Visit Deerbrook Park Toastmasters in June & Find Your Voice

Deerbrook Park Toastmasters Club is a community club, which means that it is open to all who are over 18 years of age. (Some clubs are company clubs open to only to company employees.) Deerbrook Park Toastmasters meets twice a month from 6:45 pm to 8:45 pm at the Deerfield Public Library, 920 Waukegan Road, Deerfield, IL (lower level), usually on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month. However, because of Library program scheduling conflicts, meeting dates sometimes vary so check the club’s website at https://deerbrookpark.toastmastersclubs.org/ or the Deerfield Public Library website for coming meeting dates. AND GUESTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!

Deerbrook Park Toastmasters has served the Deerfield-Bannockburn-Riverwoods-Northbrook-Highland Park communities for over 35 years and is a PRESIDENTS DISTINQUISHED CLUB award winner. This award is the highest recognition for excellence that a Toastmasters club can receive and recognizes a club’s outstanding achievement in building its membership and working with its members to accomplish their communication and leadership education goals.

Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. Headquartered in Englewood, Colo., the organization's membership exceeds 357,000 in more than 16,600 clubs in 143 countries. Since 1924, Toastmasters International has helped people from diverse backgrounds become more confident speakers, communicators, and leaders. The focus of Toastmasters begins at the club level and is on each of the club’s members.

As for cost, the Toastmasters educational program is inexpensive (about $10 per month) and does what no other speaker’s educational program does: enables you to speak in front of an audience (at your club) on a regular basis, which is how speaking skills and confidence are developed. It’s learning by doing along with constructive feedback in a non-threatening club environment. Remember, you and your fellow club members have the same goal: to become more confident and skillful speakers.

The Toastmasters Pathways learning experience is an exciting, flexible and interactive way to develop your skills. Pathways helps you learn communication and leadership skills that you need to succeed. It gives you:

1. The opportunity to build up to 300 unique competencies
2. 11 specialized learning paths to choose from
3. Online content, so that you can learn anytime, anywhere
4. Real-world, transferable skills

Below is brief information on the 11 specialized paths you can pursue. When you join Toastmasters, you'll select a path that interests you and fits with your objectives. After you've completed one path you're free to start on another. Each unique path has a curriculum with about 15 projects, some required and some elective. Each project, required or elective, has stated objectives, and accomplishing those are what each of your evaluations will be based on—however, you pick your own topic. Also, we’re all busy so you move at your own pace. And, because Deerbrook Park Toastmasters meets at the Deerfield Public Library, you have access to the library’s state of the art AV equipment. Accordingly, if you want to practice giving a Power Point presentation while completing a Pathways project, you can.

Let me share with you two brief real-life stories. Mary, a stay-at-home mom, joined Toastmasters because, while she was involved in the PTA and some other church and school activities, Mary was afraid of speaking before these groups. As a result, she just watched. Finally, she decided to do something about it and joined Deerbrook Park Toastmasters. As she progressed through the program, and with the helpful feed-back she got from her fellow club members, she found a new sense of confidence. As a result, not only did she find her voice at PTA and other meetings, she also took over as president at one of her clubs. The other story is about Rick who was a mid-level manager at a large corporation in the area. Rick had seen his career top out because of his fear of public speaking. His training and development department told him about Toastmasters and thought it might help him. On their advice Rick joined Deerbrook Park Toastmasters and immersed himself in the program. Two years into the program, Rick saw his career on the rise as he became a more confident and skilled presenter in front of his coworkers.

Also, many of our members agree that their only regret is that they didn’t join Toastmasters soon as it’s had such a beneficial impact of their personal and professional lives.

If all of this sounds good—and you want to become a more skilled and more confident speaker, come to one of the Deerbrook Park Toastmasters meetings and learn how Toastmasters can help. GUESTS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME! In June we have 3 meetings, all at the Deerfield Public Library (lower level) from 6:45 pm to 8:45 pm, on Wednesday, June 5th and Thursday, June 13th and June 27th. For more information about Toastmasters or Deerbrook Park Toastmasters Club, visit our website at https://deerbrookpark.toastmastersclubs.org/