Category Archives: Toastmasters

April 14, 2010 · 12:00 pm

I am an angel

Last 23rd March the three Toastmasters clubs in Madrid organized a gathering at Hard Rock Cafe. The event was a great success with over 40 people attending it. John organized it including 3 prepared speeches, a book review, some table topics and an improvised theatre!

I gave a speech which I had created over a year before. That was my 9th speech in the way to obtaining the Competent Communicator award of Toastmasters. The objective: “Persuade with Power”.

I first gave this speech titled “Angels” on the 4th of February in 2009. Then I used it again for the Area spring contest and again in the Division conference in Lisbon that same year.

With some slight modifications I gave it again in the gathering. This is its script and more or less what I said…

“Do you believe in angels? I do. I do believe in angels. What if I tell you that I am an angel? Wouldn’t you be curious? Wouldn’t you like to hear about it? You will.

I believe in what are called “business angels”.

I guess that most of you have heard the term “business angel” at some point. For those of you who haven’t: business angels are investors who invest part of their money in small and medium start-up companies, helping entrepreneurs to set up their businesses.

In this speech I want to persuade you to become business angels. You may tell me “Javier, I don’t have a spare million to invest in companies”; neither do I.

Do you think that to be an angel… to help someone to start-up with their business, a lot of money is needed?

Microcredits are small loans given to the poor, to those entrepreneurs who lack collaterals and a credit history; this makes them not eligible for the traditional credit given by banks. We are talking about someone in Vietnam who runs a grocery shop or about Mariano Choque who makes handicraft in Peru and whom I met last summer in a trip to Peru.

Microcredits are generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank created by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh more than 30 years ago. It all started as a research project to examine the possibility of designing a credit delivery system to provide banking services targeted to the rural poor. For this contribution, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Ok, this is the theory. Now, I told you I was an angel; do you think I am part of that Grameen Bank in Bangladesh? No, I’m not.

Today the internet has facilitated very much the process. Kiva.org is a US non-profit organization which links those poor entrepreneurs, in developing countries, with us, here in Europe.

Kiva presents us with a list of individuals who are requesting an amount to start or improve their business. There you choose in which project you want to invest and how much do you want to invest. Kiva was started in 2005, and now counts with over 600,000 users who have given credits worth over 120M$ to over 320.000 entrepreneurs.

What it’s more… think of this for a moment: we are talking about credits and not donations; this means that you will get the money back! Say you invested 100$; when you get them back what would you do with them? You can lend them again! Imagine how many people you can help with those same 100$. Isn’t it wonderful?

Let’s see possible concerns you may have:

  • Is Kiva profiting from it? No, as I said is a non-profit organization. Like Toastmasters. Of course, Kiva has operating costs, but these are covered with different donations than the money you lend to entrepreneurs.
  • How do we know the money reached the entrepreneur? Kiva works with several field partners who are the ones scouting the entrepreneurs, uploading the information about them and their projects and finally handing them the money.
  • What if the loan is not repaid? Indeed some loans are not repaid. Around 2% of them. To avoid this Kiva is classifying the field partners. They classify them according to the level of risk of the credits already given to entrepreneurs presented by the field partners. But then again… with investment in the stock market, what would you do to avoid losing your investment: you just diversify!
  • If you have more concerns or questions about the topic you may ask me after the other speeches.

As I said at the beginning, I believe in angels. I am an angel. And what is more important: each of one you here can give a loan that can change a life… each of you can become an angel.”

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March 30, 2010 · 12:00 pm

Speech about Minifutbol

Since I started the blog, I wanted to write about Minifutbol, a competition I play in Torrelodones. On March 17th I gave one speech about it at Toastmasters (supposedly a humorous speech), so what better way to explain what Minifutbol is that to share the script of that speech with you here:

“Mr Toastmaster, fellow members, guests,

This is the t-shirt of team with which I won last summer Minifutbol championship in Torrelodones… I am proud of it because that was the first championship I won in Minifutbol, I’m so proud that I’ll wear it here. I wear it here, because my partner Luca doesn’t allow me to wear it at home. She doesn’t like Minifutbol. On the awards ceremony after that tournament I was given a very big, shiny trophy… her reaction: “You’re not bringing this home! Not until you get rid of the rest of the trophies”. Once bitten, twice shy… now the trophy is somewhere hidden.

Fellow members, I want to tell you about Minifutbol, a kind of football being played in Torrelodones.

It all started 40 years ago with a group of friends in their twenties wanting to meet their old friends with the excuse of playing football matches.

Nowadays, in the village we are more than 600 people participating in it. We are divided in the following categories: “embryos”, “dummies”, “immature teens” (pavosos inmaduros), matures and veterans.

And there has always been a huge waiting list of people wishing to play, some applied in the 70s for the embryo category and still waiting and looking forward to join the veterans now.

As I told you, this T-shirt is of the team I played with last summer and won the summer tournament, now I am playing in another team. With this team we didn’t win the winter championship… no, we have been the last ones. We just won 2 matches out of 16… I don’t care, I’m even happy: in these competitions everybody gets a prize: I’ll be given a smaller trophy that will fit better in the living room of the house. Luca may not oppose this time.

Why did I switch teams? Minifutbol has a social ambition attached to it. There you get to know different people from the village. We switch teams every year and they are formed randomly: every year I inscribe myself individually and then by draw I’m placed in a team with other 7-8 players. At least this is what I’m told… actually, I never saw the draw taking place… It could be that each year my previous team is just getting rid of me.

Going back to the competition, we lost, ok, but let me tell you one rule of the competition that describes well the spirit of it: each player has to play at least a minimum of 10 minutes in every match. So it can’t happen that the best player of the team plays the whole of it and the worst doesn’t get to participate. In the case of our team we could say that we want everyone to feel part of the failure of the team.

Ok, failure is a strong word… let me put it in another way. What would you say is the most important thing in football, the success factor?… ok, so the more goals the better the match, the better the show. This year, I am in a team devoted the show, which in football means goals… we are so devoted to it that we try not to interfere with it; we have been scored 160 goals, about 10 goals per game. Sometimes we even had to score those goals ourselves. I had to score one myself.

Life goes on. In spring we play yet another tournament: the Cup. With the same teams we played in winter.

Now we have the chance to be the revelation team in the cup tournament… as you can imagine the pressure is very high among us, the expectations in us however are very low among the rest…

It never happened that the very worst team in the league has been able to win the cup.

I received the following message from the captain of the team trying to encourage us:

“Guys, I also think we can be the revelation team. Let’s do something that has never been done by anybody else, something never seen, something surprising and that will leave everybody with their mouths wide open…

… let’s play naked next Sunday.”

Mr Toastmaster.”

Of course, this post still leaves open the door to another post in which I talk about Toastmasters, but that one will come for sure.

That “next Sunday” indeed was 14th March, we didn’t play naked and we won the first match of the cup 11-5… sometimes you have to make up some facts in the speeches… the show is the show.

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February 11, 2010 · 2:07 am

Elegies and eulogies

In the previous post I mentioned Toastmasters. This is a public speaking non-profit association I joined in December 2007. Its mission is mainly to provide a mutually supportive environment in which members can grow their communication and leadership skills. It sounds great, and it is indeed.

I say it is great because of the comprehensive program it follows, the amount of manuals it has to polish different skills, the variety of the assignments you have to complete, the details within a meeting that help you polish your public speaking… and also because of the amount of things you learn.

My club, Toastmasters Madrid, meets twice a month, but yesterday I was attending other club’s meeting, Excelencia Toastmasters. I especially liked one of the speeches. It was about elegies (a mournful poem, a lament for the dead). You may think it’s a sad topic to talk about. I saw it as a very useful one. We may not have to give elegies many times in our lives, we certainly wouldn’t like so. However, the times we will be faced with it, we better be well equipped.

Some quick tips the speaker gave:

  • Intro: Tell some story that happened to both the deceased and you together, or how you met each other. Even something moderately funny might be good (explanation behind was the possitive biological stimulus that some smile, small laugh can give to a crowd under stress or even crying).
  • The body: Anything could work, try to avoid generalizations.
  • Conclusion: Talk directly to the deceased. Tell her something you wanted to have told her in live but failed to do so.  You may also read a poem.
  • Plan B: under the stress of that day, anything can happen. Plan ahead. Practice it more than ever: by practising it you will have lived it beforehand and probably will have released those emotional moments in the safe of your place instead of in front of the audience.  Have your script in written at hand, in case you cannot continue by heart you may still read it. Have some water nearby. Have a back up person with instructions of what to do in case you become blocked.

To finish his speech, the speaker recommended the eulogy B. Obama gave in Ted Kennedy’s funeral.  His evaluator read out:

Recuerde el alma dormida,
avive el seso y despierte
contemplando
cómo se pasa la vida,
cómo se viene la muerte
tan callando;
cuán presto se va el placer,
cómo después de acordado
da dolor,
cómo a nuestro parescer,
cualquiera tiempo pasado
fué mejor.
              
Y pues cemos lo presente
cómo en un punto es ido
y acabado
si juzgamos sabiamente,
daremos lo no venido
por pasado.
No se engañe nadie, no,
pensando que ha de durar
lo que espera
má que duró lo que vió,
porque todo ha de pasar
por tal manera.
              
Nuestras vidas son los ríos
que van a dar en la mar,
que es el morir;
allí van los señoríos
derechos á se acabar
y consumir;
allí los ríos caudales,
allí los otros medianos
y más chicos;
allegados, son iguales
los que viven por sus manos
y los ricos.

                                                 Jorge Manrique

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