You join Toastmaster by joining a Toastmasters Club where you meet physically at a fixed location like a community club, private club, tertiary institution, etc. Before COVID-19, every Toastmaster meeting is held physically and there was no online Toastmaster meeting.

However, during this pandemic, you can join whichever club you are interested in and transfer your membership fee to them through digital means. You can only do this by first contacting a member of a Toastmasters Club first.

You will not find any webpage where you can just enter your personal particulars and make an online payment just like the way you are registering for an online course. Nevertheless, you will have to consider the fact that when this pandemic (COVID-19) is over, physical meeting will resume and it will depend whether individual club still wants to continue streaming their meeting online while they are meeting physically at the same time.

You first have to locate where a toastmasters club is?

Usually, people are introduced to a toastmasters club by their friends. Some came across publicity materials or platform like Meetup, on a SpeechCraft workshop. You then attend their meeting and after the meeting, you indicate your interest to join the club and pay your membership fee. All you have to do next is begin attending their club chapter meeting whenever you can.

The SpeechCraft workshop is a public speaking training workshop every toastmasters club try to conduct annually for members of the public. The workshop consists usually of 4 sessions, at the interval of one session per week. At the end of the workshop, the participants will be asked if they wish to join the club as members. If they do, they are usually offered to join the club at a discounted rate.

Most people just join the first toastmasters club they have attended. After joining their first toastmasters club, they may decide that they want to join more toastmasters club or change totally to another club. The latter is less common. However, it is totally up to the individual. Some criteria for choosing a club could be based on convenience and camaraderie.

For more details, please read our the “How to choose a Toastmasters Club” page of our website.

Everybody can vote for their club to be the best Toastmasters Club in Singapore. To you, your mother is the best mother in the world. That is fine by me. To me, my mother is the best in the world. At the same time, someone is wishing that his mother is like someone else’s mother. What I am saying is that everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not everyone agrees with that opinion.

Toastmasters International has never designated any toastmasters club to be the best club in any region or in the world. However, Toastmasters International has a list of criteria for each club to satisfy in order to be designated as:

• Distinguished Toastmasters Club
• Selected Distinguished Toastmasters Club
• President Distinguished Toastmasters Club.

To learn more about this, please read our page “Which Is The Best Toastmasters Club“.

There is no upper age limit for Toastmasters. You can be as old as 2,000 years old (like me) and still be a toastmaster. However, you have to at least 18 years old to join Toastmasters.

When people refer to a Toastmasters meeting, they usually mean the Toastmasters Club Chapter Meeting. The 3 essential components of a Toastmasters meeting are:

• Prepared Speech
• Evaluation of Prepared Speech
• Table Topic Sessions

If there are sufficient manpower and time available, there can also be 

• Language Evaluation
• General Evaluation 

For more an in-depth description, please refer to our  page on Chapter Meeting.

The 3 types of speeches in Toastmasters are:

• Prepared Speeches
• Table Topic Speeches
• Evaluation Speeches

For more details on what these speeches are, please refer to our page on Chapter Meeting.

An ice breaker speech is the first prepared speech that a new toastmaster delivers. It is a 4 to 6-minute introductory speech about oneself. For more details, please read Ice Breaker on our Pathways page.

Once a month during your club chapter meeting, if you live up to your minimal commitment to your club. Some clubs that have more members tend to meet more than once a month. If you are willing to be more active, you can visit many other toastmasters clubs besides your own. There is no limit, as much as 365 days in a year if you have the time and energy.

You can always put down anything you want in your resume and blow your own trumpet so long as it is true. However, how much that will help you in your application will depend on the relevance in what you are applying for and your level of participation in Toastmasters.

Toastmasters are known for 2 things: leadership and public speaking.

If you have been actively participating in Toastmasters in such a way that you have held district officer positions, it will reflect on your leadership qualities. You can request Toastmasters to send letters to your employers when you have completed the Level 3, 4 and 5 of your Pathway. Nevertheless, make sure you have the substance to back up what you claim. You wouldn’t want to tell your employer or future employers that you are a toastmaster and yet be too afraid to make any presentations when they ask you to do so.

You can improve your public speaking by joining Toastmasters. Toastmasters education teaches you on many different skills required for public speaking. Besides that, you are given the platform and opportunity to speak in a friendly, supportive and non-threatening environment at your own toastmasters club, mentored by senior toastmasters. Please read also The Open Alumni Toastmasters Blog articles on public speaking skills.

This question is taken from the internet and it is a little vague.

Toastmasters is not a course that you have to complete or can complete. You can leave at any time you want just by not turning up at your club meetings. Perhaps the question meant how long does it take to complete a Pathway educational track.

On the other hand, the question could mean how long it takes to become a Distinguished Toastmasters.

The answer is, you can take as long as you want to. There are 5 levels for each Pathway educational track and for these 5 levels, you have a total of around 16 speeches to be delivered. In addition, some projects require you to carry out some assignment such as doing voluntary work, write a series of blog articles or record a podcast, just to name a few. If you deliver consistently one speech per month at your club chapter meeting, it will take you around 16 months.

If you want to complete your Pathway more quickly, you can arrange to have your speech delivered at other clubs’ chapter meetings. To become a Distinguished Toastmaster, you have to complete 2 pathways plus some other assignments. So that will take you double the time taken to complete just one pathway.

No, absolutely not. Toastmasters is a non-profit organisation. You can even be the District Director and you will not receive a single cent. You do what you are doing because you enjoy it.

Everything is good in its own way. In Toastmasters, you develop your leadership and public speaking skills. It is also a big family that goes beyond your own club, the country you are residing or working at, and even overseas. How good it is depends on how you value it and put it to work for yourself.

You develop your public speaking skills, gain confidence in yourself and find opportunities to learn from others who are better than yourself. You widen your social network as much as you are willing to get yourself involved.

I will not give any names here. After all, you will not read the names of any movie stars, politicians or billionaires like Steve Job, Tim Cook or Warren Buffett. Such people will not be socialising around with the common people but are guarded by bodyguards.

The moment you join Toastmasters and get actively involved, you will know who these people are. Many of these established toastmasters are usually trainers and professionals in large organisations. They are very active in Toastmasters and regularly hold appointments as district officers. You can tell when you hear them speak. If all you want is to know who are some of these people, just go to YouTube and search for “toastmaster champion”.

You can find the answer to this question on the home page, Toastmasters, of our website.