Silvertongues is the Toastmasters Club of IIM Udaipur. Started in 2012, it is the first Toastmasters club in the Udaipur area and is the recipient of the ‘President’s Distinguished Club’ title for the year 2019-20, which is the highest recognition given to a Club in Toastmasters. We are a family of enthusiastic Toastmasters who work towards improving our speaking and leadership skills! We come together for weekly sessions, deliver speeches, develop skills like public speaking, thinking on our feet, speech writing, listening, and mentoring.
The mission of the club is to provide a supportive and positive learning experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills, resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.
The Club is officially affiliated with Toastmasters International, an international non-profit organization which is dedicated to communication and leadership skill development since 1924. It has over 3.5 Lakh members and over 16,000 clubs worldwide, spread across more than 143 countries. Through its clubs, Toastmasters International helps people learn the arts of speaking, listening, and thinking — vital skills that promote self-actualization, enhance leadership potential, foster human understanding, and contribute to the betterment of mankind. We are officially a part of District 41, which comprises the entire North and East India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal.
The members of the Club meet once every week for their regular Club meeting. During these meetings, members deliver prepared speeches, take up various meeting roles and deliver constructive evaluations to learn from each other. The members also take up a variety of roles like Timer, Ah-Counter, Grammarian during each meeting. The Club has now completely transitioned to the Pathways Educational program by Toastmasters International.
A typical weekly meeting has 3 segments. In the first segment, prepared speech round, members deliver pre-written and rehearsed speeches as per the Pathways project goals and objectives. Members are awarded a Certificate by Toastmasters International upon successful completion of certain milestones. The second segment, i.e Table Topics helps members improve their impromptu speaking skills. In the final round, all the speakers receive detailed and constructive evaluations from their assigned evaluators. Awards are given at the end of each meeting for the best speech performances in each category.
The Club uses an internal custom-developed online portal for all its information maintenance activities like Speech and role booking, attendance records and sharing documents, feedback & resources with the members.
All the Executive Committee members i.e., Club Officers have attended training programmes organized at the Institute or Udaipur and are certified Officers and Judges.
The Moments of Truth sessions are periodically organized by the Club Executive Committee as required by Toastmasters International to receive feedback from the members for improvement of the Club.
The Club Executive Committee runs membership drives at the beginning of each Toastmasters Cycle within the student community to spread awareness about Toastmasters International so that maximum people can accrue the benefits of the platform.
The Humorous Speech and Evaluations Contests are organized every year in Toastmasters Clubs during the October-December period. Silvertongues Toastmasters Club has been regularly organizing these contests every year.
Last year, the contest saw enthusiastic participation for both the segments from the Club members. The Winners TM Nishant Jain (Humorous Speech Contest) and TM Tariq Hasan (Evaluations Contest) represented the Club at the Area level and then at the Division level contest held at Jaipur.
The ISC and Table Topics Contest is another prestigious contest organized annually in Toastmasters Clubs around the February-April period. The contest is organized successively at the respective Clubs followed by Area, Division and District level, and culminates in the World Championship of Public Speaking.
This contest was conducted last year in Silvertongues Toastmasters Club and it saw active participation from the members. All the contestants delivered impactful and inspirational speeches and had fun in the Table Topics Contest. TM Soumya Sharma from the PGP 2018-20 batch was declared the winner in the International Speech Contest, while TM Vinil Rao bagged the first place in the Table Topics Segment.
The Club, in collaboration with Prayatna - The Social Responsibility Club, IIM Udaipur organized the third edition of Paricharcha-The Speech Contest for School Children as a part of Audacity, our Annual Cultural Festival. This year we specifically decided to give a chance to children of less privileged schools so that they get a platform to showcase and improve their public speaking skills. This was a small effort from our side to help them build their confidence through public speaking, just in the spirit of Toastmasters International! The event saw the participation of 15 students from various schools like Pradnyachakshu Andh Vidyalaya and schools run by Narayan Seva Sansthan Udaipur.
The club conducted its milestone 300th meeting on November 15th 2020, with a “Light it up – Diwali” theme. The meeting was celebrated in a grand manner as it indicated achievement, which was accomplished by superior ability, outstanding efforts, and utmost commitment. The club had the honour to host distinguished external speakers – who shared both their Toastmasters journey and their valuable insights on the art of preparing, delivering, and evaluating speeches. The club conducted a special -Table Topics Contest, which saw enthusiastic participation from the members. In the end, TM Pooja Khushwaha, TM Garima Yadav, and TM Anurag Gupta were awarded best Table Topics Speaker by the guests.
The event was conducted on 3rd January 2021 for the secondary and higher secondary school students, as part of Inquizition’21. It witnessed the active participation of many students from 6 different schools.
The event was held online on the Zoom platform and the audience was divided into two breakout rooms. Each participant was admitted into a breakout room in turns. The words along with their pronunciation, meaning and usage was dictated to the student for helping him/her recognise and spell the word correctly. There were 15 words in total and the participant with the highest number of correct spellings in a maximum of 4 minutes was declared the winner.
It was a delight to host such enthusiastic participants and an audience for the event who helped make it a success.
The event was conducted on 13th March 2021, as part of Audacity, the Annual Cultural Fest of IIM Udaipur. A crossword with the theme “MBA Life at IIM Udaipur” attracted about 50 participants that included students and teachers. It tested the participants on their awareness of college happenings and MBA jargons. The event lasted for about 60 minutes and was made interesting by including visual clues.
The Club has received numerous awards from District 41 as well as from Toastmasters International. Some of them are as follows.
The Club has a membership that varies from around 60 to 100 members at any given time of the year. Any member of the IIMU Community can join as a member of the club. The Club operations are run by the Executive Committee which is selected from amongst the active member Toastmasters.
The Club members have completed different levels in Pathways showcasing their resolution to learning and practising public speaking. In the year 2019-20 following students have completed their speeches and achieved the milestones in the Pathways.
The executive committee for the current year is as follows.
