Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) academy in Riyadh hosted the Toastmaster International annual speech contest, which demonstrated the oratory skills of speakers from diverse backgrounds.

“It was conducted as a qualifying round for the division contest, which is held at the country level,” a Toastmaster official said here on Saturday.

“The winners will eventually qualify for the Toastmasters International global speech contest to be held in Kuala Lumpur in August this year,” he added.

SABIC was the contest venue sponsor this year, he said.

Bringing together talented speakers from diverse backgrounds in public and private corporations, universities, hospitals and diplomatic missions, the Toastmaster contest held recently covered the club’s area 38, division B in Riyadh, comprising three clubs — Desert Diamond, SABIC Star and Arabian Stallion.

The official further informed that the participants had to compete in four different segments — table topic, speech evaluation, humorous speech and international speech.

“They displayed exceptional talent vying for the top positions to be eligible for the next round,” the official maintained.

The winners in the order of merit in each category include Syed Faisal, Mohammed Al-Hajeri and Omar Khan (for table topics), Abdul Rauf Mohktar, Majid Hafeez Malik and Husam Al-Qassar (for speech evaluation), Syed Faisal, Abdul Rauf Mokhtar and Mohsin Dadarkar (for humorous speech) and Abdallah Al-Jurf, Abdul Rauf Mohktar and Syed Faisal (for international speech) categories.

The event marks the culmination of efforts of many functionaries and contestants working for weeks outside their regular working hours to make it a success, the official said.

Toastmasters clubs in Saudi Arabia are member clubs of Toastmasters International, which is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of meeting locations. Headquartered in Rancho, Santa Margarita, California in the United States, the organization has more than 292,000 memberships in more than 14,350 clubs across 122 countries.

Since 1924, Toastmasters International has helped people of all backgrounds to be more confident in front of an audience.