Club President Mary Whelan and all our members extend to the very many friends and supporters of Fermoy Toastmasters warmest greetings and best wishes for a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.
On December 16th last at our memorably entertaining and successful annual Christmas party we celebrated another great year of growth and achievement marked by so many bright and wonderful meetings. Now as the lights of festivity recede, we build on the achievements of the past and move forward with optimism and hope and eager expectation into the joyful promise of another year. We have reached the halfway point into the second decade of the twenty-first century. This is a great time to come together to enhance our lives and to find ever greater personal fulfilment by expanding our horizons and sharing in the richness of friendship and personal growth. The New Year is a resolution making time and in that a very deep-seated human wish to do better and to improve finds a clear and emphatic expression. As the Old Year slips away forever into history, the New offers tantalising opportunities for renewal and fresh adventure to be pursued with enthusiasm and vigour. There are few better ways of doing that than by coming to and participating in the wonderful activities of Fermoy Toastmasters.
On Tuesday next, January 13th, at 8.15 pm, we are setting out on the road of new beginnings once more. To underline our commitment to change and our openness to doing things in a different way, on this occasion we will be holding the first meeting of the 2015 season in the Fermoy Educational Centre, Fitzgerald Place (next door to McCarthy’s Insurance offices),a venue that is fully ground floor accessible and offers convenience and ease to everyone. Moreover it is a place where young people gather to study and try to build their future so indeed by coming here we are sending out a powerful signal that we too are an ever young organisation, a vibrant group seeking out new challenges and opportunities and ready to bring our message to the whole community with renewed confidence and joyful eagerness. Pope Francis has said that just because something has been done in a particular way for a very long time does not mean that it has to be done that way always. We are prepared in our own way too to face that challenge and to attempt with trusting hands to write a new chapter. You will never know the potential fruits of a new initiative unless you give it a try.
We come together to promote each other and to advance ever further on the road to personal accomplishment and fulfilment within a very warm and mutually supportive company of friends. Our club and our whole organisation is dedicated to the exploration of the arts of communication and leadership and to the enjoyment of the music of the spoken word. While many in these winter months actively and admirably take part in amateur theatrical groups bringing a playwright’s vision and imagination to life on the stage, our approach is to give a voice and an opportunity for personal expression and advancement to everyone in their own words telling their own story, sharing their own unique ideas and attitudes while bringing to every gathering the richness and depth and beauty of their own unique and original experience of life.
In Fermoy Toastmasters, there is a place for everyone and the club grows and develops and becomes an ever more rewarding and entertaining forum by the special contribution that every member brings and shares. It is all based on a readiness to open your heart and mind to others to give the best of what you have and what you are and equally to accept and to grow from the wisdom, the experience and insight of others with generosity of spirit and mutual good fellowship. It is based on clarity of thought, on discovering the joy of vivid presentation with brevity and feeling, of developing the richness of a deeper kind of listening, encouraging spontaneity of response and quickness of mind in the topics section given over to impromptu speaking, to assimilating positive feedback and constructive evaluation. Above all, our meetings are occasions of the display of creative energies with commitment, stimulation and humour, where we all gather eagerly looking forward and go home some two hours later feeling greatly uplifted and ever so happy.
I can truthfully say that I have spent many of the happiest times of my life in this organisation. And the reason for this is quite simple – because they are some of the very nicest and best people that you will find anywhere. To come to Toastmasters is to be among the very dearest friends. And our friends do not change us to what they think we ought to be, but rather they support and help us, they guide us along as we tap into our talents and explore our full potential, bringing out the very best in each other and rejoicing in the success of everyone for the enhancement and benefit of us all. In a word, we are a happy club seeking to promote the enjoyment of all.
So we look forward to seeing you – familiar faces and new faces, all in the same welcoming spirit – as we inaugurate the New Year at the Fermoy Education Centre on Tuesday next, January 13th, at 8.15 pm. For further information, please contact Fanahan Colbert at 086 8239007 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100.