Tara Toastmasters was founded in December 1985 and has been meeting for 40 years. Currently meetings are held on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month at 8 pm at the Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. The club’s doors are open to all interested, driven by curiosity or necessity, and guests are sure to experience the warmest welcome and a great variety of speeches throughout the meeting.
December was a month of celebrations at Tara Toastmasters!
To mark 40 years since its founding, Tara Toastmasters brought a lovely twist to the agenda on 4th December 2025. Members enjoyed two-minute reflections which materialised as Topics of the evening. Starting with the Topics Master, those short reflections told stories of iconic moments, milestones, memories, experienced by our members and were so special that one called in for the next with 9 spontaneous and sincere interventions.
On the 18th December to continue with the theme of the 40th anniversary we had 4 unforgettable speeches, 3 from the long serving members, Colm Bowden (26 years), Niamh Gourlay (22 years) and Pat Cowley (22 years) and 1 from ‘young’ (2 years) Johnny Waldron. Experiences shared, lessons learned, advice given and new connections made.
Tara Toastmasters has also celebrated the achievement of one of its great speakers at the Online Speech Contest: After obtaining 1st Place!🥇 at the Area Contest Pat Caslin placed himself at the podium once again in the Division contest on the 7th November and progressed to the District level! Pat was one of 9 contestants at the District Online Speech Contest onthe29th November. He couldn’t have represented the club better. Tough competition. We are so proud of you, Pat!
Tara Toastmasters have been giving workshops on public speaking to Special Olympics athletes for several years. We were very pleased to do an online workshop recently with the Athlete Voices Group, athletes from all over Ireland chosen to represent the Irish Summer Games which will take place in June 2026. Some athletes will be interviewed by the media at the Games. We ask the athletes to speak for a few minutes about any topic and then give them tips and feedback. We encourage them to smile, project their voice, have good eye contact and how to use gestures. All things we have learned at Tara!
Tara Toastmasters is working hard to close this special year with the Smedley Award to follow the 14 consecutive years of President’s Distinguished Club Award.
Enrica Pascarella
Tara Toastmasters
