How well do you know our club? It dates back 11 years, and 55 years lie between our oldest and youngest member. But that is not all!

Did you know…
… the club was founded in in 2009, the first meeting ever was held 10th November 2009
… the founders were Kevin Baggs and Bernice Paulin-Booth
… it chartered (=reaching 20 members) on 9th March 2012, 2.5 years after the first meeting
… the club was initially named Ware Speakers. When it moved to Hertford, they renamed to East Herts Speakers to be inclusive of all surrounding towns
… the club resided in many locations in Ware, which incidentally all closed shortly after the club moved in (Kevin confirmed this was coincidence!), before moving to the Salisbury Arms Hotel in Hertford in 2016 where we have been ever since.

We’re special! EHS was the first Presidents Distinguished Club in the entire District 71! We educated 4 Distinguished Toastmasters (the highest level of educational achievement you can reach in Toastmasters): Kevin Baggs, Ian Perry, Steve Campion and Rosy Holt.

EHS helped founding 3 other successful clubs: Saffron Walden Speakers, Stevenage Speakers and Winchmore Hill Speakers.

The club counted a whopping 35 members at one point and a lot of members have been in the club for over 5 years (Kevin, Liz, John, Stuart Lawson, Steve). At the moment EHS holds 22 members from different backgrounds and nationalities, our youngest member is 25 and the oldest 80! It’s a great diverse and supportive learning space and coming to meetings is like catching up with friends.

Every year we have a fabulous Christmas dinner and as a club like to have a drink and chat after the meetings.
One of our former club members, Jane  joined us this year in February as toastmaster of the evening and concluded the night saying  she has been to many clubs but there is none like EHS. This is a statement we have heard from many guests and members.

Since March 2020 ( Covid-19 pandemic) all meetings are held via zoom to keep everyone safe. We quickly adapted to this new medium, using visible jazz hands instead of clapping (usually members’ microphones are muted), zoom polls to do our voting fast & easy and google forms to do collect member feedback on speeches and keep track on guests. We can’t have a drink at the bar, but always make sure to keep the zoom running after the meeting ended to catch up and connect with each other nevertheless.

Guests are always very welcome, if you like to join, please click here to learn more on what to expect being a guest.

If you would  like to get updates and meeting reminders, join our Facebook group!