JEDDAH, 28 September 2006 — Thirty-two students from five Filipino schools in Jeddah have completed the Youth Leadership Training organized by the PSME-WRSA Toastmasters Club.

For eight consecutive Thursdays, Junior and Senior students of Al Hekma, Bader, IPSJ, Sunrise and Pearl of the Orient learned the rudiments of public speaking and leadership.

During their recognition ceremony at Al Harithy Hotel, the participants demonstrated what they learned by delivering speeches in the presence of their parents and school officials.

In the tradition of Toastmasters International (TI), winners were selected in three contests: prepared speech, in which each contestant was allocated 5-7 minutes to deliver a speech; table topics, with each contestant allowed 2 minutes in an impromptu discussion of a given topic; and evaluation, in which contestants made a critique on the speech of a target speaker.

The winners were:

Prepared Speech: Nusaybah Muti, 1st; Rania Alji, 2nd; and Najmah Omar, 3rd.

Table Topics: Sarah Mohd Kurshid, 1st; Nusaybah Muti, 2nd; and Revier Jeril Alzate, 3rd.

Evaluation: Jouella Marie Marzo, 1st; Revier Jeril Alzate, 2nd; and Sarah Mohamad Kurshid, 3rd.

The winners received trophies from PSME-WRSA Toastmasters Club President Roger Gonzales, who holds the Toastmasters’ rank of Advanced Toastmaster-Silver (ATM-S).

Gracing the occasion was ATM Joey Villanueva, governor of Division “G,” which comprises the three Toastmasters areas in Jeddah and Yanbu. Division G is part of TI’s District 79, which group’s all Toastmasters clubs in the Middle East. PSME-WRSA Toastmasters Club belongs to Area 24, which is part of Division G.

In his inspirational speech, Villanueva said that contrary to the common notion, speaking and leadership skills are not acquired by birth but by learning.

Paraphrasing the TI, he said these are skills that could be “learned by doing.”

Villanueva said tens of thousands of people all over the world have become effective communicators and leaders by joining Toastmasters clubs as a forum to learn and practice.

Founded in 1924 by a group of California professionals led by Dr. Ralph Smedley, TMI now has 220,000 members in 91 countries. Interestingly, TI’s international president for administrative year 2006-2007, Johnny Uy, is a Filipino from Cebu City in the central Philippines.

Villanueva said that as DTM Uy and many others have discovered, there’s more to Toastmastering than just learning how to speak in public.

Also gracing the ceremony at Al-Harithy were other notables in the Toastmasters movement in Jeddah, including past governors Ben Guerra of Division G, Danny Abenes of Area 11 and Nilo Lucena of Area 24.

Training coordinator Art De Leon said the success of the event was made possible with the help of Sky Freight Forwarders, SPSNET, Pepsi, Ms. Finah Bueno, Mr. Raffy Abesamis, Mr. & Mrs. Philip Luyun, Mr. & Mrs. Arlen Imperial, the participating schools, and others who provided help in different ways.