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Alliston Toastmasters look for new members wanting to improve communication skills

November 27, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Public speaking consistently ranks near the top of the list for people’s most common fears.

For many people, when they get up in front of a crowd, they can feel the nervousness and the perspiration dripping as their name is called and they walk to the podium.  

Toastmasters International has been helping people improve their communication, public speaking, and leadership skills for over 100 years.

The organization grew out of a single club founded in 1924 and now has 265,000 members in 13,833 clubs across 149 countries.  

Alliston Toastmasters is the local chapter of the international organization, and they are looking for new members to join them and benefit from the skills learned at their bi-monthly meetings.

Mandy Masters is the current president of the local chapter. Along with Yvonne Konrad, a past president and founding member of the local group, they welcome local residents to come out and see what Toastmasters is all about.  

The Alliston chapter of Toastmasters has been active for over 20 years and has several long-time members.

“Toastmasters is an international organization in countries all around the world,” explained Sandra Sharpe, Alliston Toastmasters member and past president. “It is an organization that is focused on helping people achieve communication and leadership goals through a self-study club environment.”

She added, “It’s about communication in general. It is designed to help you learn how to present to an audience, how to speak in an impromptu way, and organize your thoughts. It also teaches you how to improve your listening skills and your presentation skills, ultimately leading to better leadership skills.”

The meetings are designed so everyone who attends will know in advance what is going to happen.

“It’s a very structured meeting,” Sharpe explained. “It’s structured so when people come to a meeting, they don’t have to think too much about how the meeting is going to operate because it’s very organized. We have something called ‘table topic.’ That’s an opportunity for members to practice their impromptu, or off-the-cuff skills. We also have prepared speeches where a member will want to achieve an objective. That could be speaking humorously or speaking on a technical subject. Members will present their five to seven-minute speeches. The speeches will be evaluated in a way that highlights things that would make it better but also helps them to move forward in the process of becoming a better speaker.  

Alliston Toastmasters meets every second and fourth Tuesday of every month at the Public Library on Victoria Street in Alliston, at 7 p.m.

If you would like to be part of a meeting, you can just drop in and introduce yourself, or contact President Mandy Masters via email at MandyMasters78@gmail.com.

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