by JILL MORRISON, DTM #clubreporter

Tis the season for gift giving but Wichita Falls Club 305 gives gifts all year long. While attending a meeting this fall, I found this club offered many gifts.

The first gift was showing us the way to embrace the NEW way of attending Toastmaster meetings, a hybrid meeting comprised of virtual and in person attendees. Even though this meeting was a little over 100 miles away from the metroplex, I was able to attend from the comfort of my own home, meeting with club members and a few guests who attended in person. Even though I didn’t attend in person, I was still given the gift of opportunity to participate as an evaluator in the meeting. I was honored to be able to hold a role and offer thoughts on the next gift provided.

The second gift provided was the gift of knowledge. We were enlightened with an excellent speech sharing how to bridge communications with the Gen Z population. Did you know Generation Z is the largest generation in existence today? They are about 27% of today’s population. Did you also know they differ the most from any other of the 6 living generations, starting with an 8 second attention span? How do we bridge communication with Gen Z’s? Tip #1 is to remember they are mostly visual and have that short attention span. Facetime, Zoom, Tic Toc and Instagram are great mediums of communication with Gen Zers.

The third gift this club provided was the gift of relevance. While this is the oldest club in the district with the member having the most Toastmasters district seniority, they still discuss relevant topics in their table topics. We discussed topics related to the Afghanistan withdrawal, heart disease and Cancer offering all of us information on topics of importance to all of us.

These are just three gifts provided by this long-standing club. Visit them and check out all the other gifts this club and its members can provide.