The Fountain Valley Toastmasters Club would like to invite you to their Open House on February 23rd at the Fountain Public Library. Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving its members’ public speaking and leadership skills.

During regularly held club meetings, members practice giving speeches, give feedback on speeches, or perform other meeting roles such as speech timer, grammarian (who looks at grammar usage during the meeting), or the “Toastmaster” who runs the meeting.

The Fountain Valley Toastmasters meets on the 2nd and 4th Thursday at the Fountain Library located at 230 Main Street in the conference room from 7:30pm-8:30pm.

Joining toastmasters will help give you the ability to speak in public with confidence and clarity, a highly valued skill in today’s world. Toastmasters clubs offer a safe and supportive environment to practice speaking, the chance to receive feedback on your speaking strengths and areas for improvement, and opportunities to learn from other members’ speeches.

The Toastmaster meetings are a great place to learn interesting things from other people speeches, to meet nice people, and to learn Robert’s Rules of Order.
Toastmasters is very inexpensive. The initial materials and handling cost $20, and there is a $6/month membership fee + local fee ($1/month). Depending when you join you may pay up to 6 months worth at a time.

The Fountain Toastmasters is run by Chris Mortenson a Fountain Valley Resident living near Widefield High, a newly retired Air Force Major with a strong training background as well as space/missile operations experience, and experienced Toastmaster. Chris Mortenson joined the Offutt Toastmasters club in Omaha, NE in 2006 and after six months became club president. After moving to Colorado Springs in 2007 he joined UCCS Toastmasters and soon became their president 2007-2008. The next year he was an Area Governor overseeing four northern Colorado Springs Toastmaster clubs. He has competed in many Toastmasters speaking contests, winning several, and was featured in “The Toastmaster” magazine August 2008. When he learned of the Fountain Valley Club forming in 2009 he became involved and, except for taking a year off when deployed to Iraq, has supported it since.

You are invited to check out the Fountain Toastmaster meeting on February 23rd. They are having a special “open house” meeting especially designed for people to learn about Toastmasters and to see if this is right for you. You’ll be glad you did.

Think about who else you know in this area who might benefit from and/or enjoy Toastmasters; family, friends, coworkers, neighbors or anyone… as long as they are at least 18 years old they are welcome. Please pass along this information to them. They’ll thank you later.

You can find more information on the Toastmasters website at:

http://www.Toastmasters.org

If you have questions, please feel free to call (719) 360-3032 or e-mail lget1112@d26leaders.org.