Simply Amazing

My becoming a peruser of Toastmaster Magazines is a consequence. I read from cover to cover to prepare meticulously for my monthly reading with golden girls. After reading the magazine extensively and intensively, I choose MY TURN as my favorite column. The VIEWPOINT of IP Johnny Uy is inspiring. I won't miss LETTERS where I can cherish what other toastmasters think of the articles in the back issues of Toastmaster magazines. It feels good to be surrounded by toastmasters of the same mind and heart no matter which part of the world they are.

Take "Live and Learn" of MY TURN in May issue for instance, I can't help wondering if Ben Daughtery, CTM, is writing a fiction. He can certainly publish a series of books with his power in literacy. I was impressed with his good wording in each paragraph, good transition from paragraph to paragraph, and the overall structure he organized the entire article, not to mention, the awesome beginning, moving body, and clinching conclusion. Boy, he's joined Forgotten Voices Toastmasters Club in Angola Prison for more than ten years.

Not knowing a thing about Angola in Louisiana, even though I stayed at Graduate School of LSU Medical Center in New Orleans for three years. I am curious about this institution and found out that Angola is the Louisiana State Penitentiary and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the U.S. with 5,000 inmates and over 1,000 staff on an 18,000 acre plantation close to the Mississippi border.

Forgotten Voices Toastmaster Club is one of Angola's many inmate organizations. It has won several major speech competitions, received the "Distinguished Club" award four years in a row, had its club newsletter voted in the top ten Toastmaster list worldwide for three consecutive years (1995-1998), and was honored with the 1998-1999 Founders Award. Wow!

I believe there are many Bens and Angolas in Taiwan as well. If inmates are provided with opportunities to speak up and guided by enthusiastic mentors, some of them can write as well as Ben. Prisons are not the only places where people get "incarcerated", nursing homes, loony bins, shelter homes for young and sick, just to name a few. There are people who have no idea how Toastmasters can help them prosper in their own way. Let's seek chances to help pave a good path for people to transform from hemmed and hawed stammerers and stutterers to eloquent and confident speakers.

I don't know who Ben's mentor is. I am sure he or she is gratifying to see what happened to Ben after he joined the Forgotten Voices Toastmasters Club. Simply amazing, isn't it? Sherry