It was seven years ago today that I got my first involvement in building a Toastmasters club.  On September 13, 2001, I held my first (and only) Area Council meeting as Northwest 1 Area Governor.  It was at the IHOP on Barrington and Higgins in Hoffman Estates.  Due to 9/11, it was very uncertain how many officers from the Area clubs would attend, but we had a good turnout with 5 other officers representing 4 of the 6 Area clubs in attendance, including District Governor Eric Matto, who represented one of the clubs.

One of the officers present at the meeting was Mei Li, the Fox Valley Club President.  Later in the meeting, Mei mentioned that she would like to get a club started at Palatine High School, which hosted a Chinese school on Sundays.  Her idea was that there are parents who generally have nothing to do at the school while their kids are taking classes on learning the Chinese language and culture, so why not have Toastmasters meetings there so they could not only learn public speaking skills but also help them with speaking better English.  Mei wanted me to get involved, plus would like some help from the other Area clubs.

While Mei later on claimed that I motivated her to start up this club (see page 9 of the April 2002 issue of District 30 Spotlight newsletter), nothing could be further from the truth.  I was brought up in the Arlington Heights/Rolling Meadows club, which had some prominent members that had a very negative view on building new clubs in northwest Cook County.  They think it didn’t make any sense that new clubs are being built while our club was struggling to get new members.  One member went as far as getting his boss to join our club, despite the fact he was working in Northbrook and living in Vernon Hills at the time – there are plenty of clubs that would be more convenient.  This member claimed he would discourage his boss from joining Toastmasters if he couldn’t join our club!

Well later that month I did go to Palatine HS to meet up with Mei and we went to the cafeteria to promote Toastmasters to the parents of the kids who attend the Chinese school there.  Not only I was in unfamiliar territory with people I never met, but just about everyone came from China and English was not their 1st language.   Mei tried to use me as the main attraction for promoting a new club as I was an Area Governor, but I was talking aimlessly about how Toastmasters can be useful for them.

XL demo team at the very first meeting on October 21, 2001. From left to right, District 30 Lt. Governor of Marketing Charles Brooks, Bonnie Wiltz of South Suburban club, Mei Li, Cindy Dingwall of Palatine club, Northwest Division Governor Bruce Burrow, Northwest 1 Area Governor Will Hsiung

We did have a demo meeting on October 21st with Charles Brooks, then the Lt. Governor of Marketing, plus Bruce Burrow, then the Northwest Division Governor, who gave a speech.   It wasn’t a big turnout (about a dozen present) and they weren’t enthusiastic but seemed to be curious.   We continued holding meetings every Sunday since, with later meetings included other District 30 dignitaries such as District Governor Eric Matto, International Director Justin Gottfreid and a then-unknown professional speaker wannabe named Johnny Campbell, who joined Toastmasters a few months previously, tried to speak as many clubs as possible to achieve his Competent Toastmaster and is now an accredited speaker through the organization.  Many of the Chinese parents that were at the 1st meeting stuck with us and we attracted additional potential members to the point where we had the 20 to charter the club in less than two months.

I began to realize that what got many of these people to join wasn’t necessarily that we did a lot to impress them, but they found Toastmasters to be a very useful tool for them to learn and speak English better.  Many of them were raised to be quiet and reserved, not speak up, not expressing their views and feelings freely, due to how both the Chinese culture and government work.  Toastmasters empowered them to get to the same level personally and professionally as their native-born colleagues at their work.

As we were ready to charter, we had to vote on the name of the club. The Chinese school at Palatine HS is called Xilin and that was the working name of the club.  But Mei wanted to not only open the club to those not associated with the school and she kept pushing the members to promote it outside, even getting outside Toastmasters to push the idea.   So after giving them some names related to Xilin, we voted to name the club XL.   Since then, we had several outsiders to join the club, primarily from India, also speaking English as a 2nd language.  It turned out they were more comfortable in a club where the majority were in the same boat as them when it came to English.

Since we chartered, the club reached Distinguished Club status every year except one, when the Chinese school split up in 2004 and the club relocated to Conant HS in Hoffman Estates with one half of the school. They earned President’s Distinguished Club 5 times, two in which they earned all 10 goals. They participated in nearly every Area Contest as well as most District conferences.

I enjoyed the experience in starting the XL club and treasured the memories throughout the years I was involved in them.  While I seriously questioned the way District 30 approaches club building (acting desperate by doing things such as steering prospective Toastmasters to build clubs rather than joining an established one just to pump up their numbers and meeting their paid club goals), this is one example in which most who visited and joined probably would not have looked at Toastmasters at all if it wasn’t for the XL club.