The Jubail Toastmasters Club (JTC) recently celebrated 11 years of empowering youth with effective communication and leadership skills through its popular Youth Leadership Program (YLP).

Twenty-five students from grades nine to 11 took part in its latest three-month youth leadership-training program. JTC President Sadagopan Natarajan and his team, comprising Zainudeen, Koteeswaran, B.V. Rao, Jagadeesan Kumar, Venkatesan Devarajan and Jamil Akhtar, coordinated the activities.

The young leaders were given rigorous training through a number of workshops conducted by seasoned toastmasters P.G.R. Nair, J. Kumar, Jamil Akhtar, Koteeswaran, Dr. R.J. George, Suresh Kumar, Jacob Kuriakose, Zainudeen, Sushil Agrawal, Venkatesan Devarajan and Safare Mohammed.

Sadagopan was all praise for the JTC YLP 2013 core team that included Koteeswaran, B.V. Rao, Masood Asif, Viswaraj Ayapilla.

“They all devoted their time in conducting the youth leadership program for more than three months. They were very impressive,” he said.

Toastmasters Bhaskar Patel, Jeyashankar, Jayakrishnan, Safare Mohammad, Asif Siddiqui, Aziz Siddiqui, Surendra Chari, Oommen Thomas, N.V. Arasu, A.K. Das, D.R. Pai, V.N. Mishra, Ehsan Ansari, Naresh Iyer and Sankaranarayan also mentored the participants.

The grand finale at the Petrokemya Beach Camp last week was the culmination of a series of weekly programs. It witnessed two key contests during which the youth leaders demonstrated their oratorical skills.

Jubail Toastmasters Club, which is the first club in Jubail also celebrated its 15th anniversary.

The success of the event, according to the Sadagopan, was largely due to the patrons’ support, including Petrokemya management, Kashif Mushtaq, S. Subramanian, Anil Thomas and Fadi Al-Tabba, as they helped the youth leaders explore and hone their communication and leadership talents.

Youth leader Prishita Shivram anchored the finale with aplomb. Many educators, journalists and leaders of Toastmasters fraternity, including TMI District Governor (Saudi Arabia-2013-14) Saif Ali Shaikh, Immediate Past Division-L Governor Jacob Kuriakose and International Indian School-Jubail Principal Dr. Syed Hameed were among the attendees, cheering the young leaders.

P.J.J. Antony and Jagadeesan Kumar delivered keynote speeches while many eminent Toastmasters such as Syed Waheed Lateef, Dr. Anjum, Abdul Waheed, Anish Baksh, R.K. Bhala, Abdulaziz Al-Sharekh, N.V. Arasu, Ramesh Jagadeesan, Surendra Chari and Manoj C. Nair lent their support to the success of the event.

Mirza Khalid Baig won the JTC YLP 2013 championship title. The second and third place winners were Sayeed Ahmed and Aalisha Padhy respectively. Nawaal Arshad was the winner of the Table Topics Contest with Fathima Aktha Manzur and Aqib Mustafa coming second and third respectively.

A panel of senior Toastmasters led by Dr. R.J. George picked up the best of the best from among the participants.