JEDDAH, 11 December 2005 — Forty toastmasters from all the eight clubs in the Western Region have underwent training on how to judge in the various competitions of the Toastmasters movement.

Led by Ben Guerra, the governor of the movement’s Division G, Jeddah’s first-ever training workshop of that kind was held at the Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) Lexus Training Center in Jeddah.

The ALJ Toastmasters Club, headed by its president, Mohammad Rashid Ali, acted as host and handled the logistics preparation for the seminar, which lasted for 5 hours.

ALJ Toastmasters Club is the first corporate club of the movement in Jeddah.

Guerra said the trainers gave an extensive training on “how to judge” in Table Topics, Speech Evaluation, Humorous Speech and International Prepared Speech competitions.

Participants were told that “trained judges” are the key to picking the right winners.

The trainers were senior toastmasters from various clubs in Jeddah, including K.G. Guna of HOPE club, Mustafa Ay of Tanglaw, Nilo Lucena of the PSME-WRSA club, Jose Poovathinkal of HOPE club and Danny Abenes of Tanglaw.

Joey Villanueva, the division’s lieutenant governor for education and training and coordinator of the event, said the training is in preparation for a series of competitions early next year.

Interclub competitions in the movement begin with the Area contests, followed by the Division, then the District and International contests.

Division G covers three areas, namely, Area 11 (Jeddah) whose contest is on Feb. 10, Area 22 (Riyadh) whose own competition is on Feb. 17, and Area 24 (Jeddah), which will hold its contest on Feb. 24.

Winners in all four categories in these contests will slug it out in the division level, which will be held in Jeddah on March 10.

Governor Guerra said that with the recently completed training, Saudi West is now “fully equipped to face any shortcomings in terms of trained judges.”

Winners in the inter-area competition will then represent Division G in the next District competition pitting all the divisions in the Gulf, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.

All clubs are registered with the California-based Toastmasters International, which now has over 10,500 clubs and more than 211,000 members in approximately 90 countries. Toastmasters International is a leading movement founded in 1924. It is devoted to making effective oral communication a worldwide reality.