Area Toastmasters mark 69th anniversary on Pi Day
BUTLER TWP — People may join Toastmasters International to improve their communication skills, get more comfortable with public speaking or to practice a speech they are working on.
Whatever the reason, members may end up sharing childhood experiences with Star Wars toys in front of the rest of the group at a meeting, like Leonard Sunday did at the Earlybirds Toastmasters’ meeting Saturday morning, March 14.
Sunday’s improvised speech about toys he played with as a child was in response to a regular exercise the Toastmasters embark upon at their meetings “table topics,” in which they draw a prompt and have to deliver a speech to the rest of the group. He commented that this exercise, as well as the usual speeches that members prepare and deliver at each meeting, help improve communication skills — a benchmark mission of the organization.
“It’s speaking, communication, leadership; I’m a firm believer in having effective communication because I believe that builds good relationships,” said Sunday, the president of Earlybirds Toastmasters, the chapter that meets in Butler. “We have members here that have had very successful careers by taking the things they have learned here and applying it in their daily duties at work.”
While the Earlybirds Toastmasters conducted their normal business Saturday at the LifeSteps facility on Stirling Drive in Butler Township, its members also commemorated the group’s 69th anniversary. The meeting falling on March 14, which some may know as Pi Day, gave the group a good method to celebrate the milestone by partaking in pies, and it gave Jackie Hutz, a Toastmasters member, a good theme to write the table topics prompts.
Toastmasters International is an organization founded in 1924 as a collaborative learning environment for people to learn the art of public speaking. Sunday commented that the organization is built upon the collaboration between speakers, who give one another feedback to tighten their speaking and orating through even minute details.
Hutz said that the Saturday meeting was “a little more casual” than the club’s normal meetings,” but the members and a few guests still had time to practice speaking via the table topics activity.
Cameron Suorsa, vice president of public relations for the Earlybirds Toastmasters, said the speeches the members give are based on a curriculum offered by Toastmasters International. The international organization has different “paths” members can take depending on what they are interested in improving, which varies up the speeches the members listen to each week in addition to giving them in-person examples of good speech.
“You can have someone who is trying to advance in the workplace, maybe they’ve been promoted to manager... and they just are lacking or are afraid of public speaking,” Suorsa said. “It’s an incredible opportunity to Toastmasters to improve communication skills but also leadership skills with the different meeting roles and leadership roles you can take on in club.”
Suorsa said members of the Earlybirds Toastmasters also placed at the 2026 Area 13 Competition, at which members of different chapters compete in different speech categories. Suorsa placed first in International Speech Competition and Julian “Jay” Martin took first place in Evaluation Speech Contest.
According to Suorsa, winning competitions is not the only satisfying accomplishment that he has gotten through Toastmasters — he takes pride in the people he and the rest of the club have helped over the years.
“A couple years ago we had someone join knowing they had issues with a stutter and they wanted to improve it,” Suosa said. “We’ve had several people who maybe have a speech impediment, like a stutter, and it has been a blessing to be able to help those people and have them progress through that.”
Before concluding the meeting, the Toastmasters also presented a check donation to LifeSteps, which has hosted the group’s meetings for free in recent years.
For more information on the Earlybirds Toastmasters, visit its website at earlybirdstoastmasters.com.
