JEDDAH: A Saudi national won the first prize in "The Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking 2015" with his humorous speech titled, “The Power of Words,” in the US recently.
Mohammed Qahtani, a security engineer, was selected among the nine final contestants among 30,000 participants from 100 countries after several eliminating rounds that began six months ago.
Around 2,500 people from around the world attended the event, held at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday.
“It’s a dream I never thought would happen in real life,” said Qahtani, adding that he entered the contest for experience and never expected to bring home the trophy.
His winning speech was a personal tale about events in his life where “if words had been said differently, they would have elicited a radically different response.”
“Your mouth can spit venom, or it can mend a broken soul,” said Qahtani, who grew up being teased for having a speech problem. He said that as a child, he uttered his first word at the age of six.
The contestants delivered five- to seven-minute speeches on wide-ranging topics and were judged on content, organization and delivery.
This was the first time in the history of the contest that all three top winners came from countries outside North America. Aditya Maheswaran from Mumbai, India, won the second prize with his speech titled “Scratch” and Manoj Vasudevan from Singapore bagged the third prize with his speech titled, “We Can Fix It.”
Toastmasters International is a worldwide nonprofit educational organization that empowers individuals to become more effective communicators and leaders.
For information about local Toastmasters clubs, visit www.toastmasters.org. Follow @Toastmasters on Twitter.
Saudi wins Toastmasters debate contest in US
Saudi wins Toastmasters debate contest in US
