In October 1924, a group of men assembled by Dr. Ralph C. Smedley met in the basement of the YMCA in Santa Ana, California, U.S.A., forming a club “to afford practice and training in the art of public speaking and in presiding over meetings, and to promote sociability and good fellowship among its members.” The group took the name “Toastmasters.”

We are a local chapter of Toastmasters International. Today, Toastmasters International is an organization which gives its members the opportunity to develop and improve their public speaking abilities through local club meetings, training seminars and speech contests. Toastmasters International includes more than 199,000 men and women in more than 9,300 clubs in more than 70 countries. BIT is one of more than 150 Toastmasters clubs represented in continental Europe’s District 59. European Toastmasters are honing their skills in cities like Gothenburg, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Marbella, Prague, Berlin – and Bonn.

Go to www.district59.org for more information.

Toastmasters is also a multilingual organization. Besides the English-language BIT, there is the German-speaking Redefluss club in Bonn. In nearby Cologne, there are two more German-language clubs that conduct one meeting a month in English.