Leadership and Communications are important skills for our young people to learn.
Both of these skills are abilities that managers pay to have in their organizations, and they are skills that improve the well being of our society. In general, we need young adults with top leadership and communications expertise. But, to get young adults with expertise in communication skills, leadership skills, speeches, public speaking, impromptu speaking, meetings, and being a chairman or toastmaster, we need to start with our youth.
I want to introduce you to Young Speakers Incorporated.
Young Speakers Inc. is a not-for-profit Society set up to provide actual, applied, leadership and communications skills, learnt and experienced by standing in front of a 'live' audience. You and I both know, the best way to learn to speak in public,
is by speaking in public!Young Speakers Inc. has been set up as a result of the many requests we have heard by parents who understand the rigours of todays business market, and by people who have been in the public speaking game for a long time, in a not-for-profit role.
- Kevin Warwood is the Chief Operating Officer and has just finished a term as the National President of Toastmasters NZ. He has spent 17 years in Toastmasters, also including roles as the National Marketing and Education Vice Presidents roles. Kevin has also started 7 successful Toastmasters Clubs in New Zealand, many in companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, ANZ Bank, AC Nielsen and Orion Health.
The reason Young Speakers is being set up is to satisfy a growing need for similar services to Toastmasters, for people under the age of 18 (a restriction of Toastmasters). It was decided to set Young Speakers up after I was swamped with requests by parents, for their children.
The programme is based on an interactive curriculum, following the current Toastmasters Club format, and located in Schools, Youth Groups, or Community Groups. The programme is based on five Manual assignments. These assignments are a mixture of speaking and leading tasks. They all require reading the text, and presenting a speech, in front of a live audience. Typical assignments are, the Ice Breaker, Using Words, Vocals and Body language and meeting skills.
The leadership programme is more formally conducted in the leadership structure of Young Speakers Inc. Within the Club, there are a number of leadership positions, such as President. Further up the structure, a group of Clubs is then collected into an Area, for administration purposes. The Area has an Area Manager, who is one of our young adults. Then, initially, the Areas are collected under a Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is made up of Executive Directors and Non-Executive Directors. The Non-Executive Directors are the promising young adults that have progressed up the ladder.
What's next? We believe we have a great product/service to provide applied youth leadership and communication skills training. Our very ambitious aim is to start 10 Clubs in 2008. To do that, we need to get the final part of the plan working now and a commitment from you to become involved. Please contact us so we can talk you through the programme.
