Mangaluru: The Port Town Advanced Toastmasters club emerged as District 92, Division F Premier League Champions at the Championship finale at Sahyadri College on Sunday 28th October 2018. With the parent body, Toastmasters International trimming its event calendar to accommodate only one District Conference annually, Division F, led by its dynamic Director Savitha Salian and her team of Area Directors and Club Presidents (there are 12 clubs in the division) held their own Division Conference with 3 unique speech competitions that upped the friendly rivalry and revelry between clubs to a new level as they competed against each other for the DFPL title, which in the end was won by the Port Town Toastmasters Club. The brain and indeed most of the brawn behind the spectacular show was TM Flexon Fernandes, the conference chair.
The events included a Tall Tale competition – a competition centered around speeches laced with humour that framed the improbable in reality; a relay competition – a speech competition with two participants taking turns to weave fabric from random words or phrases handed down to them by the Contest Master; and a crisis management competition – a competition in which a team of three debated a crisis provided to them and came up with a plausible strategy to deal with it. The Clubs had earlier conducted their own competitions to select their representatives to the finale.
TM Sridhar Kamath, Area Director compered the entire show with verve, while TM Geeta Periera, TM Sulochana and TM Sapna Shenoy were the contest masters of the Relay, Crisis Management and Tall Tale Competitions respectively.
The grand finale also saw education sessions by District officers who attended the conference: Regional Advisor – DTM Gauri Sheshadhari conducted a session on mentoring clubs – new and sustaining while Club Growth Director – DTM Boopathy Shankar delivered a presentation on the need of the hour – Chartering and sustaining college clubs
And the winners are:
Relay Speech Contest:
1st Place – Port Town Advanced Toastmasters Club (Vidya Shenoy and Preetham Kamath)
2nd Place – ProAct Toastmasters Club (Sorabh Nahata and Shreevidhya)
3rd Place – Infosys Toastmasters, Mangalore SEZ (Anubhav Ghosh and Jyotsna Rai)
Crisis Management Speech Contest:
1st Place – Port Town Advanced Toastmasters (Phylis Maria D’costa, Brian Fernandes and Y. S. Adappa)
2nd Place – Manipal-Udupi Toastmasters Club (Sudesh Kumar, Amit Pai and Subhash Praveen Ullal)
3rd Place – Winners Club (Malini Hebbar, Vidya Shenoy and Preetham Kamath)
Tall Tales Contest:
1st place – Joe R. (from INSPIRON Toastmasters Club)
2nd place – Malini Hebbar (from Port Town Advanced Toastmasters)
3rd Place – Gokul Bhandary (from Infosys Toastmasters, Mangalore SEZ)
DTM CK Ballal was the Chief Judge, while various functionaries from Timers to Tally counters and Sergeant-at-Arms, all from the various clubs of Division F rendered yeoman service to the success of the event.
